Saint  Dominic 
and  the 

Order  of  Preachers 


Saint  Dominic 
and  the 

Order  of  Preachers 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  HOLY  NAME  BUREAU 
871  LEXINGTON  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK  CITY 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBR/H'i 
CHESTNUT  HILL  MASS. 


\ 


Nihil  obstat : 

FR.  IGNATIUS  SMITH,  O.  P.,  S.  T.  Lr.,  Ph.  D. 
FR.  JOANNES  McNICHOLAS,  O.  P.(  S.  T.  Lr. 

Imprimatur : 

FR.  RAYMUNDUS  MEAGHER,  O.  P.,  S.  T.  Lr., 


Prior  Provincial. 


Die  4ft  Augusti,  1916. 

Imprimatur : 

+  JACOBUS  JOSEPHUS, 

Episcopus  Columbensis. 


FIRST  EDITION,  TWO  THOUSAND,  DECEMBER,  1916 
SECOND  EDITION,  FIVE  THOUSAND,  APRIL,  1917 


Dedicated  In  Gratitude 
To  My  Mother 
To  Whom  Under  God 
I  Owe 

My  Dominican  Vocation 


Copyright,  1916 

by 

J.  B.  O'CONNOR,  O.  P. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


Foreword  . 7 

Preface  .  9 

PART  I 

THE  BIOGRAPHY  OF  ST.  DOMINIC 

Birth  and  Childhood . .  19 

Education  .  21 

Canon  of  Osma .  22 

A  Mission  of  State . 23 

Missionary  Aspirations  .  24 

The  Albigensian  Heresy  .  25 

Failure  of  Papal  Legates  .  27 

His  Apostolic  Zeal  . . ...  28 

The  Miracle  at  Fanjeaux . 29 

Institution  of  the  Second  Order .  30 

Adversities  .  32 

The  Inquisition  .  33 

The  Rosary  .  35 

The  Crusade  .  37 

Refusal  of  Episcopal  Honors  .  40 

The  First  Community  House .  41 

Approval  as  a  Diocesan  Community . . .  42 

Council  of  the  Lateran .  43 

Disappointment  . 44 

Meeting  of  St.  Dominic  and  St.  Francis .  46 

Innocent  III  Names  the  Order  .  47 

Selection  of  a  Rule . 47 

Confirmation  of  the  Order  .  48 

Dispersion  of  the  Brethren .  50 

Miracle  at  St.  Sixtus  . 52 

The  Order  and  the  Universities .  53 

Journey  to  Spain . 54 

Foundations  in  Italy  and  Poland . 56 

The  First  General  Chapter .  58 

Preaching  in  Lombardy  and  the  Third  Order .  59 

The  Second  General  Chapter . , .  61 

St.  Dominic’s  Character . 63 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PART  II 

GENIUS  OF  THE  ORDER 

Character  of  the  Times . 

Danger  of  This  Movement . . 

The  Struggle  Against  Rationalism . . 

St.  Dominic’s  Grasp  of  the  Situation  . 

Contemplative  Element  . 

The  Vows  . . . 

Spirit  of  Dominican  Discipline  . 

Dispensations  . 

Rule  and  Constitutions . .  . . 

Organization  . 

Study  . 

Theological  Systems  . . . 

Need  of  a  New  Method . . 

St.  Dominic’s  Plan  . 

Its  Execution . 

Obstacles  to  Study  Eliminated . 

Schools  of  the  Order . 

New  Studies  . 

Character  of  Students . 

Preaching  . 

Deficiency  of  Preachers  . . . 

Preaching  the  Vocation  of  Dominicans . 

St.  Dominic’s  Plan  Unique  . . . 

Preaching  the  Chief  Work  of  the  Order 

Preachers  to  All  . 

Preaching  to  Infidels . . . 

Not  All  Preachers . 

PART  III 

DOMINICAN  ACHIEVEMENTS 


71 

73 

73 

75 

76 
78 
81 

83 

84 

85 
92 
92 

94 

95 
99 

102 

103 

106 

109 

110 
110 
111 
113 
115 
117 
119 
121 


Education  .  127 

Theology  and  Philosophy  .  134 

Scriptural  .  ^  ’  14g 

Canon  Law .  156 

Languages  . 7.7.  .7.  .7.7.77! !  158 

Literature  . . . 7.7.7!!  162 

Science  . ! ! ! ! ! .  171 

Missionaries  and  Martyrs .  175 

Saints  and  Mystics . !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  192 

Sociological . iq7 


In  Other  Fields  of  Service  ...!!!!! 

APPENDIX 
Letter  of  Pope  Benedict  XV . 


223 


FOREWORD 


In  the  writing  of  this  modest  volume  the  author 
has  had  in  mind  the  purpose  of  supplying  a  defi¬ 
ciency  in  the  literature  of  the  Dominican  Order.  As 
far  as  he  is  aware,  there  is  no  work  in  English  treat¬ 
ing  in  a  brief  yet  comprehensive  manner,  and  in 
popular  form,  of  the  biography  of  St.  Dominic  and 
of  the  genius  and  achievements  of  his  Institute.  It 
is  true  that  each  of  these  topics  has  been  treated 
separately  or  in  conjunction  with  one  of  the  other 
two.  But  such  works  have  been  so  voluminous  or 
erudite  as  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  being  con¬ 
sidered  popular.  In  the  present  volume  the  author 
lays  no  claim  to  either  erudition  or  originality.  For 
this  reason  he  has  deemed  it  unwise  to  load  his 
pages  with  references.  Those  who  read  this  book 
will  do  so  for  the  edification  contained  in  its  subject- 
matter  rather  than  to  consult  the  sources  from 
which  it  was  drawn.  Written  in  the  few  and  un¬ 
certain  hours  not  preempted  by  the  engrossing 
duties  of  preaching  missions,  the  writer  is  keenly 
conscious  of  the  many  shortcomings  of  these  pages. 
He  trusts,  however,  that  in  the  interest  which  at¬ 
taches  to  his  subject  these  deficiencies  will  be  lost 
sight  of  by  the  reader.  Undoubtedly  many  topics 
lightly  touched  were  deserving  of  more  extensive 
notice;  but  these  abbreviations  were  necessary  in 
order  that  the  length  of  the  book  might  not  defeat 
its  own  purpose.  Would  that  it  were  worthier  of 
2 


8 


FOREWORD 


its  subject!  But  such  as  it  is,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
it  will  make  the  name  of  St.  Dominic  better  known 
and  his  achievements  esteemed  according  to  the 
just  measure  of  their  worth  in  the  seven  hundreth 
anniversary  year  of  the  founding  of  his  Order. 

J.  B.  O'C. 


October  10,  1916. 


PREFACE 


Any  sketch  of  the  mission,  organization  and  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Dominican  Order  which  did  not  contain 
an  adequate  study  of  its  holy  founder  would  be 
much  like  the  play  of  Hamlet  with  the  Dane  left 
out.  For  it  is  from  its  founder  that  every  order 
gets  its  own  genuine  and  authentic  spirit,  temper, 
fibre,  character,  individuality,  ethos — or  whatever 
other  name  may  be  chosen  to  designate  the  marks 
that  distinguish  and  set  off,  apart  and  alone,  one  re¬ 
ligious  institute  from  every  other.  If,  then,  no  two 
orders  are  alike  in  spirit  and  organization,  it  is  for 
the  very  simple  reason  that  no  two  individuals  are 
quite  the  same  in  temperament  and  ideals. 

Now,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  only  a  personality  of 
astounding  force  and  strength,  only  a  man  of  en¬ 
gaging  moral  and  intellectual  beauty,  only  a  person 
of  quick  and  correct  perception  of  the  needs  of  the 
ageless  Church  and  the  aging  civilizations  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  inherent  possibilities  of  human 
devotion  and  service  on  the  other,  only  a  saint 
whose  heroism  against  the  man  within  was  out¬ 
stripped  by  his  love  for  the  God  above,  could  ever 
have  so  dazzled  and  impressed  succeeding  genera¬ 
tions  by  his  spirit  and  ideals  that  countless  souls 
ever  after  would  put  it  down  as  a  wilful  sin  against 
the  light  to  fail  to  reproduce  his  lineaments  in  their 
own  lives.  The  man  who  builded  and  rigged  out  a 
ship  that  has  weathered  the  storms  of  seven  cen¬ 
turies  without  the  loss  of  so  much  as  rudder  or  sail 
must  have  gauged  with  almost  prophetic  foresight 
the  force  and  perils  of  the  winds  that  blow  and  the 


10 


PREFACE 


waves  that  surge  from  individual  hearts,  and  from 
the  heart  of  humanity  itself. 

After  seven  centuries  St.  Dominic’s  work  still  in¬ 
spires  and  energizes.  Therefore,  Dominic  still  lives 
green  in  the  hearts  of  men.  True,  from  the  begin- 
and  speaks.  His  name  and  his  memory  are  still 
ning  his  enemies  have  banded  together  to  besmirch 
his  character  and  belittle  his  achievements.  Even 
Catholics  have  indulged  the  unorthodox  practice  of 
comparing  him  with  other  saints  of  God  in  order  to 
minimize  his  real  greatness  and  -historical  signifi¬ 
cance.  But  by  the  longevity  and  fecundity  of  his 
Order  Dominic  proves  unmistakably  his  own  superb 
genius,  whilst  by  the  compelling  charm  of  his  sanc¬ 
tity  he  still  holds  his  ascendency  over  the  hearts  of 
men.  Amongst  the  holy  patriarchs  of  monasticism 
he  holds  an  unique  place — apart. 

Scion  of  a  noble  house,  with  the  blood  of  Gothic 
warriors  in  his  veins,  Dominic  was  above  all  else  a 
strong,  imperial  character.  Because  he  knew  his 
own  mind,  and  deliberately  chose  the  means  to  ac¬ 
complish  his  purposes,  there  was  littlq  room  left  in 
his  make-up  for  poetry  and  romance.  Dominic 
never  dreamed.  He  was  essentially  a  doer.  He 
lived  to  serve.  This  was  the  passion  of  his  life.  But 
may  not  drudgery  be  called  divine  just  because  it  is 
doing  one  s  simple  duty  simply?  Every  inch  a  man, 
he  tiied  always  and  everywhere  to  do  a  man’s 
honest  share  of  work  for  Him  whose  cause  he  had 
espoused.  Single-minded,  he  could  not  but  be  jeal¬ 
ous  of  his  Master’s  interests,  as  are  all  nature’s 
noblemen,  quick  to  cede  their  own,  not  other  peo¬ 
ple  s  rights  and  riches.  His  own  cherished  him  as 
a  tender  father,  whose  love  for  them  frequently  ran 
the  lengths  of  utter  self-effacement.  He  was  ever 


PREFACE 


11 


athirst  to  bring  back  to  the  feet  of  Jesus  the  masses 
who  were  prostituting  to  error  and  superstition  the 
intellects  which  God  had  given  them  for  knowing 
the  truth.  Like  Moses  coming  down  from  the 
mountain,  he  swelled  with  holy  anger  at  the  dis¬ 
loyalty  and  unfaithfulness  of  those  Christians  who 
were  bartering  away  the  actualities  of  eternal  truths 
for  passing  hypotheses  and  exchanging  the  fecund 
moral  laws  for  sterile  formulae  of  conduct.  As  he 
had  the  real  apostle’s  expansive  heart,  he  sought  to 
multiply  himself  during  his  lifetime  and  throughout 
the  ages  by  founding  an  order  which  should  break 
the  bread  of  truth  to  the  hungry  and  starving  in 
every  corner  of  Christendom,  and  even  beyond  its 
most  far-flung  outposts.  He  himself  preached  al¬ 
ways.  Of  his  sons,  he  asked  the  boon  of  being  al¬ 
lowed  to  go  to  the  Asiatic  Tartars  to  announce  to 
them  the  good  news  of  salvation.  No  wonder,  then, 
that  the  ages 

“venerate  the  man  whose  heart  is  strong, 

Whose  hands  are  pure,  whose  doctrine  and  whose  life 

Coincident,  give  lucid  proof 

That  he  is  honest  in  the  sacred  cause.” 

Dominic  lived  in  an  age  that  was  witnessing  the 
collapse  of  feudalism,  which  had  held  Europe  to¬ 
gether  politically  for  several  hundred  years.  In  the 
thirteenth  century  the  masses  were  feeling  for  the 
first  time  the  full  thrill  of  political  power  and  im¬ 
portance.  Solidarity  was  just  then  being  born  in 
the  social  conscience  of  Europe.  Ugly  signs  of 
sharp  conflict  between  this  new  spirit  and  the 
Church  were  already  visible  in  the  heavens.  Many 
churchmen,  mistrusting  completely  the  new  life  that 
was  pullulating  all  over  Europe,  pleaded  for  an  iron 
return  to  the  worn-out  forms  of  the  past.  Dominic, 


12 


PREPACE 


with  his  quick  eye,  saw  the  dangers  of  the  new 
spirit.  Rather  than  kill  it  off  completely,  however, 
or  flee  from  it  utterly,  he  determined  to  harness  it 
securely  to  the  Master's  chariot.  His  challenge  to 
the  Zeitgeist,  or  spirit  of  the  times,  was  the  Order 
of  Preachers.  Like  every  other  order,  it  was  a  flat 
contradiction  of  the  spirit  of  the  world,  which  is  at 
all  times  utterly  unassimilable  by  the  Church.  Un¬ 
like  every  other  order,  it  profited  from  those  cur¬ 
rents  which  did  not  run  directly  counter  to  Rome. 
By  embodying  in  his  Institute  those  ideals  of  the 
times  that  were  capable  of  purification,  Dominic 
showed  his  keenest  foresight  and  sublimest  genius. 
Because  he  baptized  into  religion  a  spirit  that  was 
destined  to  hold  sway  over  men  for  ages,  he  as¬ 
sured  his  Order  a  permanence  of  existence  which, 
over  and  above  the  divine  blessing,  could  not  other¬ 
wise  have  been  achieved. 

Now,  the  spirit  of  the  Dominican  Order  from  the 
beginning  has  been  essentially  democratic.  Its 
ranks  were  recruited  from  the  masses.  It  was  no 
longer  only  the  rich  burgher’s  son,  or  the  scion  of 
the  nobleman  who  lived  yonder  on  the  sharp  crag, 
who  might  hope  to  reach  holy  orders  in  the  mon¬ 
astic  life.  Amongst  the  Dominicans  there  was  al¬ 
ways  an  open  door  to  the  priesthood  for  the  worthy 
sons  of  the  people.  Then,  too,  all  the  superiors  of 
the  Order  ruled  by  the  suffrage  of  the  rank  and  file. 
St.  Dominic  wished  to  make  his  Order  a  royal  Or¬ 
der,  because  he  looked  upon  all  the  brethren  as 
arm-fellows  of  God.”  Therefore,  to  none  was  de¬ 
nied  the  right  of  a  vote.  The  authority  of  the  Order 
was,  notwithstanding,  highly  centralized.  At  Rome, 
near  the  tomb  of  the  Apostles,  sat  the  Master  Gen¬ 
eral,  drawing  his  powers  and  jurisdiction  directly 


PREFACE 


13 


from  the  Apostolic  See.  His  authority  was  sover¬ 
eign,  though  the  privileges  of  the  brethren  were 
guaranteed  by  chapters  regularly  convened.  Since 
the  heads  of  the  various  provinces  into  which  the 
Order  was  soon  divided  had  to  be  approved  by  the 
Master  General,  a  wholesome  connexionalism  and 
internationalism  arose  which  made  for  efficiency, 
unity  of  program  and  permanency  of  campaign. 
Localism,  which  had  characterized  the  older  mon¬ 
astic  institutes,  and  which  had  been  responsible  for 
their  eventual  decay,  was  supplanted  among  the 
Dominicans  by  a  vigorous  rivalry  of  the  different 
provinces.  Local  control  by  the  episcopate,  and  the 
vow  of  stability — powerful  agents  in  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  monastic  individualism — were  done  away 
with  by  the  General’s  right  to  tell  off  an  individual 
friar  to  any  corner  of  the  world. 

The  Friars  Preachers  were  the  first  to  make  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge  an  integral  part  of  their  mon¬ 
astic  program  and  scheme.  Amongst  the  older  or¬ 
ders  there  was  scarcely  one  which  countenanced 
study  for  its  own  sake.  The  principal  business  of 
the  primitive  monk  was,  by  corporal  labor,  fasting 
and  strict  monastic  observance  to  become  “a  hunter 
hunting  out  the  beast  in  man.”  Nearly  all  intellec¬ 
tual  effort  was  confined  to  the  reading  of  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  and  the  Fathers  and  the  copying  of  manu¬ 
scripts.  St.  Dominic,  in  founding  his  Institute,  real¬ 
ized  that  if  his  sons  were  to  be  preachers  of  the 
Word,  if  they  were  to  go  down  into  the  busy  marts 
of  men  to  challenge  the  new  doctrines  that  were 
being  hawked  about,  it  was  necessary  that  they 
should  be  well  equipped,  not  only  with  sacred 
knowledge  but  also  with  the  secular  learning  by 
which  men  set  such  store.  And  for  this  reason  the 


14 


PREFACE 


Order  of  Friars  Preachers  has  ever  played  a  notable 
part  in  the  history  of  education.  Born  in  the  golden 
age  of  universities,  its  children  were  from  the  first 
men  of  learning.  To  promote  learning,  every  dis¬ 
pensation,  save  such  as  would  have  constituted  a 
downright  violation  of  the  law,  was  conceded. 

With  such  encouragement  of  intellectual  life  we 
need  not  be  surprised  that  the  Order  during  the  past 
seven  hundred  years  has  afforded  the  Church  a  con¬ 
stant  stream  of  theologians  and  thinkers  whose  one 
concern  it  has  been  to  defend  the  integrity  of  the 
Faith.  Its  preachers  have  been  priests  “whose  lips 
guarded  wisdom,”  preaching  to  the  benighted,  not 
themselves,  not  glittering  generalities,  but  a  simple 
yet  systematic  course  of  instruction.  Its  painters, 
its  musicians,  its  architects,  have  made  the  spirit  of 
Christ  to  live  in  the  hearts  of  men  in  divers  ways. 
Its  martyrs  in  countless  hundreds  have  by  their 
blood  testified  to  the  divinity  of  the  doctrine 
preached  by  the  brethren. 

The  services  rendered  to  the  Church  by  the  Order 
of  St.  Dominic  have  been  the  theme  of  many  a  Pon¬ 
tiff’s  words.  Some  have  spoken  of  it  as  the  great 
nursery  of  theologians.  Others  have  extolled  it  as 
the  training-school  of  martyrs.  Others,  still,  have 
praised  it  as  the  true  guardian  of  art  and  learning. 
But  none  has  pointed  out  its  providential  mission 
more  clearly  than  Honorius  III,  who  in  his  bull  of 
confirmation  —  a  most  remarkable  papal  document 
by  reason  of  its  brevity — proclaimed  that  Dominic’s 
brethren  were  to  be  for  all  ages  pugiles  Udei — the 
well-trusted,  the  ever-ready  champions  of  the  Faith. 

Of  them  the  beautiful  words  of  Lionel  Johnson 
are  true : 


PREFACE 


15 


“Ah,  see  the  fair  chivalry  come,  the  companions  of  Christ! 
White  Horsemen,  who  ride  on  white  horses,  the  Knights 
of  God ! 

They,  for  their  Lord  and  their  Lover  who  sacrificed 
All,  save  the  sweetness  of  treading,  where  He  first  trod! 


“These  through  the  darkness  of  death,  the  dominion  of 
night, 

Swept,  and  they  woke  in  white  places  at  morning  tide; 
They  saw  with  their  eyes,  and  sang  for  joy  of  the  sight, 
They  saw  with  their  eyes  the  Eyes  of  the  Crucified. 

“Now,  whithersoever  He  goeth,  with  Him  they  go; 

White  Horsemen,  who  ride  on  white  horses,  oh,  fair 
to  see! 

They  ride,  where  the  Rivers  of  Paradise  flash  and  flow, 
White  Horsemen, with  Christ  their  Captain ;  forever  He !” 


In  the  following  pages  we  have  an  authentic  study 
of  the  character  and  mission  of  the  Good  Man  of 
Calaroga,  done  with  a  careful  hand,  an  open  eye 
and  a  loving  heart.  He  appears  here  as  that  “In¬ 
comparable  Leader”  of  the  ages  whose  words  are 
still  audible  and  whose  tenderness  still  allures.  The 
author  is  well  qualified  to  speak  of  the  spirit  and 
organization  of  the  Dominican  Order.  With  a 
justifiable  pride  he  selects  some  few  of  the  achieve¬ 
ments  which  in  the  course  of  the  ages  his  for¬ 
bears  in  religion  have  consecrated  to  Holy  Mother 
Church.  In  a  few  pages  he  has  succeeded  admir¬ 
ably  in  condensing  a  vast  mine  of  information, 
difficult  to  obtain  otherwhere.  It  is  an  inspiring 
record,  and  one  which  should  make  a  mighty  appeal 
to  those  youthful  hearts  in  which  the  spirit  of  sac¬ 
rifice  still  burns.  ,,  ~  ~  ^ 

Thomas  M.  Schwertner,  O.  P. 

New  York  City. 


PART  I 

The  Biography  of  St.  Dominic 


. . . . 


St.  Dominic,  Founder  of  the  Order  of  Preachers 


SAINT  DOMINIC 


Birth  and  Childhood 

Unfortunately  for  posterity,  the  mediaeval  chron¬ 
icler  did  not  attach  the  same  importance  to  exacti¬ 
tude  in  the  matter  of  dates  as  does  his  modern 
brother,  trained  to  scientific  methods.  Conse¬ 
quently,  we  cannot  authoritatively  assign  to  any 
particular  year  the  event  of  St.  Dominic’s  birth.  So 
we  must  content  ourselves  with  the  statement  that 
about  the  year  1170  the  future  saint  was  born  in 
Calaroga  in  Old  Castile. 

Historians  unanimously  assign  to  Felix  de  Guz¬ 
man  and  Joanna  d’Aza,  the  parents  of  Dominic,  a 
conspicuous  place  among  the  nobility  of  Spain ;  and 
some  of  the  saint’s  biographers  have  not  hesitated 
to  connect  them  with  the  reigning  house  of  Old  Cas¬ 
tile.  But  whether  or  not  this  latter  contention  be 
well  founded,  it  is  certain  that  they  possessed  those 
princely  qualities  of  soul  that  unmistakably  identi¬ 
fied  them  with  the  royal  household  of  their  heavenly 
King ;  and  these  qualities,  which  alone  constitute 
true  nobility,  they  transmitted  unimpaired  to  their 
children. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century 
Joanna  d’Aza  was  held  in  popular  esteem  as  a  saint. 
This  popular  veneration  was  in  a  measure  sanc¬ 
tioned  officially  by  the  Church  when,  in  1828,  she 
was  beatified  by  Leo  XII.  Nor  were  Blessed  Joanna 
and  her  illustrious  son,  St.  Dominic,  the  only  mem¬ 
bers  of  that  distinguished  family  whose  sanctity 
won  the  formal  approbation  of  the  Church.  Manes, 


20 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  second  son,  one  of  the  first  members  of  the 
Order  founded  by  his  younger  brother,  was  beati¬ 
fied  by  Gregory  XVI ;  while  Antonio,  the  oldest  son, 
a  canon  of  St.  James,  was  also  distinguished  for  his 
extraordinary  piety. 

Among  the  many  interesting  and  beautiful  leg¬ 
ends  that  cluster  around  the  infancy  of  St.  Dominic 
there  are  two  which  are  especially  worthy  of  notice : 
It  is  narrated  that  while  Joanna  d’Aza  was  awaiting 
the  birth  of  her  third  son  she  seemed  to  see  him,  in 
a  dream,  born  under  the  appearance  of  a  white  and 
black  dog,  holding  in  his  mouth  a  torch  which  illu¬ 
minated  the  entire  world.  Again,  we  are  told  that 
on  the  day  of  his  baptism  his  godmother  beheld  him, 
in  a  vision,  with  a  brilliant  star  gleaming  on  his 
forehead.  These  two  legends  have  found  a  place  in 
the  coat  of  arms  of  the  Order,  on  the  shield  of  which 
is  to  be  found  the  dog  with  his  torch,  and  the  shining 
star  of  the  saint’s  baptismal  day.  Whatever  may  be 
said  of  the  authenticity  of  these  legends,  it  is  certain 
that  they  have  received  not  a  little  justification  from 
subsequent  events  in  the  life  of  him  concerning 
whom  they  are  narrated.  Was  it  a  mere  coincidence 
that  the  habit  in  which  he  chose  to  clothe  his  chil¬ 
dren  was  made  up  of  black  and  white  garments  ? 
And  certainly  none  can  deny  that  he  held  high  the 
torch  of  divine  truth  in  the  benighted  land  of  the 
Albigenses.  It  is  equally  certain  that  in  the  glori¬ 
ous  galaxy  of  the  Church’s  missionaries  no  star 
shines  mote  brilliantly  than  that  of  the  heroic  apos¬ 
tle  of  Languedoc.  Another  link  in  the  chain  of  co¬ 
incidences,  if  such  they  be,  is  this:  The  popular 
name  for  the  religious  children  of  St.  Dominic  is 
Dominicans,”  the  Latin  equivalent  of  which  is 
Dominican.  In  the  schools  of  the  Middle  Ages  they 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


21 


were  wont  to  divide  the  Latin  word  in  two  and, 
changing  the  final  “i”  into  “es,”  render  it  “Domini 
canes ” — watchdogs  of  the  Lord.  This  was  in  rec¬ 
ognition  of  the  well-known  vigilance  of  the  Order 
in  safeguarding  the  rights  of  the  Church,  and  its 
jealous  watchfulness  lest  heresy  mar  the  beauty 
of  God’s  eternal  truth. 

Education 

During  the  first  seven  years  of  little  Dominic’s 
life — the  fateful  years  when  enduring  impressions 
are  received  and  influences  make  for  future  charac¬ 
ter — his  pious  mother  watched  carefully  over  his 
training  and  education.  Then,  feeling  the  need  of 
providing  greater  opportunities  for  study  than  could 
be  found  at  home,  she  placed  him  in  the  care  of  her 
brother,  the  arch-priest  of  Gumiel  d’lzan.  After 
seven  years,  spent  under  the  helpful  tutelage  of 
his  uncle,  the  latter,  in  turn,  realized  that  the 
rapidly  developing  mental  power  of  his  pupil  de¬ 
manded  a  wider  range  of  study  than  he  could  per¬ 
sonally  provide.  Accordingly,  St.  Dominic  was  sent 
to  the  University  of  Palencia.  Here  for  ten  years  he 
followed  the  various  courses  of  its  curriculum  with 
such  ardor  and  success  as  to  win  the  admiration  of 
his  professors  and  enshrine  his  memory  in  the  tradi¬ 
tions  of  the  university  as  long  as  it  endured. 

It  is  interesting  to  know,  in  view  of  the  false  rep¬ 
utation  for  cruelty  with  which  hostile  historians 
have  sought  to  invest  him,  that  it  was  during  these 
university  days  that  St.  Dominic  began  to  manifest 
that  heroically  self-sacrificing  charity  which  char¬ 
acterized  his  entire  life.  During  his  residence  at 
the  university,  Spain  was  visited  by  one  of  those 


22 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


terrible  famines  which  more  than  once  scourged  the 
Middle  Ages.  Palencia  suffered  with  the  rest  of  the 
kingdom,  and  people  died  in  the  streets  for  want  of 
food.  To  relieve  the  sore  distress  of  these  poor  peo¬ 
ple  Dominic  sold  his  priceless  books,  annotated  with 
his  own  hand.  When  we  consider  the  scarcity  of 
books  in  the  days  before  the  invention  of  the  print¬ 
ing-press,  their  inestimable  value,  and  the  further 
fact  that  these  particular  books  had  written  into 
their  margins  much  of  the  knowledge  garnered 
from  his  years  of  study,  we  begin  to  appreciate  the 
magnitude  of  the  sacrifice  he  made  for  the  poor  of 
Palencia. 

On  another  occasion  during  his  university  days, 
he  endeavored  to  sell  himself  into  captivity  to  effect 
the  freedom  of  a  poor  man  who  was  held  in  slavery 
by  the  Moors.  These  and  many  other  heroic  acts 
of  charity  characterized  his  years  at  Palencia. 

Canon  of  Osma 


His  studies  finished,  Dominic  was  elevated  to 


the  priesthood  and  at  the  invitation  of  the  bishop 
took  his  place  among  the  cathedral  canons  of  Osma. 
In  numbering  St.  Dominic  among  the  members  of 
his  official  household  the  bishop  had  in  mind  the 
assistance  which  a  priest  of  his  well-known  piety 
and  learning  could  give  in  effecting  a  reform  among 
the  canons,  which  for  a  long  time  he  had  contem¬ 
plated.  In  this  he  was  not  disappointed,  and  in  rec¬ 
ognition  of  his  part  in  the  accomplished  reform 
Dominic  was  made  sub-prior  of  the  chapter* 


cathed^nf1  /a^°nS  are  s,ec£ular  P^ests  attached  to  th« 
of  the  hi  hon  T^Ce.SeAa,nd  ,f0rm  the  senate'  or  council 
the  rule  of  St  An  cat.^ec^ra^  c?nons  of  Osma  lived  undei 

the  H?ieoffrfligfoufUpHests!nd  many  reSf>eCtS  foll°we< 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


23 


On  the  accession  of  the  prior  of  the  chapter,  Don 
Diego  d’Azevedo,  to  the  bishopric  of  Osma,  1201, 
following  the  death  of  Bishop  Martin,  St.  Dominic 
was  made  prior  of  the  cathedral  canons.  His  life  as 
a  canon  of  Osma  was  entirely  given  over  to  the 
chanting  of  the  divine  praises  in  the  cathedral,  ear¬ 
nest  meditation  on  the  eternal  truths,  and  fervent 
and  frequent  prayer.  Blessed  Jordan,  his  first  biog¬ 
rapher,  tells  us  that  during  these  years  of  interior 
life  his  constant  prayer  was  that  God  would  give 
him  a  true  charity  which  would  be  “efficacious  in 
procuring  and  securing  the  salvation  of  men.” 
Thus,  nine  years  were  spent  at  Osma — years  that 
were  fruitful  of  wisdom  and  grace  for  the  active 
apostolate  to  come. 

His  biographers  describe  the  prior  of  Osma  as  a 
man  of  middle  size,  thin  and  wiry.  His  countenance, 
possessing  some  color,  was  pleasant,  and  his  disposi¬ 
tion  cheerful.  His  hair  and  beard  were  red  and  he 
was  somewhat  bald.  He  was  possessed  of  a  bound¬ 
less  sympathy,  and  consideration  for  others  held 
first  place  in  his  thoughts. 

A  Mission  of  State 

The  virtues  and  talents  of  St.  Dominic  were  not 
destined  to  be  forever  hidden  in  the  obscurity  of  the 
chapter-house  of  Osma.  An  event  now  took  place 
that  led  him  out  of  his  retirement  and  was  soon  to 
plunge  him  into  the  depths  of  his  life-long  aposto¬ 
late.  Alphonsus  IX,  King  of  Castile,  desired  the 
daughter  of  the  Lord  of  the  Marches  (presumably 
a  Danish  prince)  as  a  wife  for  his  son  Ferdinand. 
For  the  negotiation  of  this  delicate  business  the 
King  chose  the  Bishop  of  Osma,  and  he,  in  turn, 


24 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


selected  St.  Dominic  to  be  his  companion  and  coun¬ 
sellor.  They  set  out  on  this  important  embassy 
in  1203. 

The  course  of  this  journey  took  them  through 
Toulouse,  in  the  southern  part  of  France,  where 
they  beheld  with  amazement  and  sadness  the  utter 
demoralization  wrought  by  the  Albigensian  heresy. 
As  he  contemplated  the  ravages  of  these  modern 
Manichaeans,  the  spirit  of  the  apostle  seized  the 
soul  of  the  saint  and  he  longed  to  tarry  among  them, 
to  shed  upon  their  benighted  souls  the  light  of  re¬ 
vealed  truth,  to  kindle  once  again  in  their  chilled 
hearts  the  fire  of  divine  love,  and  thus  to  bring 
them  back  to  the  paths  that  lead  to  Christ  and  sal¬ 
vation.  .  Unable  at  that  time  to  realize  this  holy 
yearning  of  his  soul,  he  resolved  that,  God  willing, 
he  would  consecrate  his  life  to  the  extirpation  of 
heresy  and  the  propagation  of  the  Faith  of  Christ. 

Missionary  Aspirations 

Having  returned  to  Spain  after  the  successful 
issue  of  their  mission,  Dominic  and  Diego  were 
again  despatched  to  the  north,  with  a  magnificent 
retinue,  to  escort  the  betrothed  lady  to  Old  Castile. 
But  a  higher  power  willed  otherwise  and  this  sec¬ 
ond  mission  came  to  a  mournful  end.  Arriving  at 
the  Marches,  Don  Diego  and  his  companion  learned 
that  the  prospective  wife  of  Prince  Ferdinand  had 
died  during  their  absence.  Relieved  in  this  unhappy 
manner  of  the  further  responsibilities  of  their  mis- 
hon,  the  two  ecclesiastics,  who  held  in  common  the 
holy  ambition  of  consecrating  their  lives  to  the  con¬ 
version  of  the  heathen,  set  out  for  Rome  to  offer 
themselves  to  the  Holy  Father  for  work  among  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


25 


Saracens.  It  was  towards  the  end  of  1204  that  they 
arrived  at  the  Eternal  City.  Innocent  III  was  much 
more  concerned,  however,  with  the  pagans  nearer 
home  than  with  the  Saracens,  and  instead  of  grant¬ 
ing  their  petition  sent  them  to  Languedoc  to  preach 
to  the  Albigenses. 

The  Albigensian  Heresy 

This  heresy  took  its  name  from  the  town  of  Albi, 
in  France,  which  was  its  principal  stronghold.  It 
made  its  first  appearance  in  Europe  in  1022,  and, 
while  it  received  its  death-blow  from  St.  Dominic 
and  his  brethren,  it  did  not  utterly  disappear  for 
more  than  a  century  afterwards.  Among  the  many 
heresies  that  directed  their  poisoned  shafts  against 
the  revealed  truths  of  Christ,  it  was  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  most  virulent.  In  fact,  it  had  but  very 
little  in  common  with  the  Christian  religion  and 
smacked  strongly  of  orientalism.  In  its  logical 
consequence,  it  was  subversive  of  Christianity  and 
the  civilization  founded  on  it. 

The  Albigenses  denied  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
and  taught  that  there  were  two  creators — the  one 
good,  the  other  bad.  The  former  was  the  creator  of 
the  invisible,  which  alone  was  good;  the  latter,  of 
the  material  world.  Indeed,  they  called  the  creator 
of  the  visible  world  a  murderer  and  a  liar.  The  Old 
Testament  they  regarded  as  the  bible  of  the  devil. 
All  the  patriarchs  and  prophets,  they  asserted,  were 
damned.  Christ,  they  blasphemously  contended, 
was  a  wicked  man.  For  John  the  Baptist,  whom 
they  regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest  demons,  they 
had  a  special  hatred.  They  rejected  all  the  sacra¬ 
ments,  but  matrimony  was  the  special  object  of 


26 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


their  aversion.  This,  however,  did  not  keep  them 
from  committing  the  most  monstrous  crimes 
against  natural  and  supernatural  morality.  After 
they  had  received  the  “Consolamentum”  and  were 
made  perfect,  they  were  free  to  commit  suicide,  and 
often  did. 

These  emissaries  of  darkness  were  at  the  height 
of  their  power  when  St.  Dominic  and  his  companion 
arrived  in  Languedoc.  Strenuous  but  unsuccessful 
efforts  had  been  made  by  various  Pontiffs  to  crush 
this  vile  system,  which  was  filling  the  south  of 
France  with  vice  and  error.  Various  and  vigorous 
were  the  means  resorted  to.  The  Council  of  Rheims 
(1148)  excommunicated  the  protectors  of  the  her¬ 
esy.  The  Council  of  Tours  (1163)  decreed  that  the 
heretics  should  not  only  be  excommunicated  but 
that  their  property  should  be  confiscated.  The 
Third  General  Council  of  the  Lateran  (1179)  re¬ 
newed  its  anathemas  against  all  protectors  and 
abettors  of  the  heresy  and  called  upon  the  secular 
power  to  exert  itself  that  this  plague  on  society  and 
religion  might  be  effectually  suppressed.  In  this 
the  council  but  imitated  the  heretics,  who  them¬ 
selves  had  repeatedly  appealed  to  force  to  further 
their  ends.  With  the  accession  of  Innocent  III 
(1198)  the  work  of  conversion  and  repression  was 
vigorously  prosecuted.  In  the  very  first  days  of 
his  pontificate  this  zealous  Father  of  Christendom 
assigned  a  number  of  monks  of  the  Order  of  Citeaux 
to  the  task  of  converting  and  reconciling  the  her¬ 
etics  through  the  ministry  of  preaching  and  pen¬ 
ance.  Iheir  success,  however,  was  inconsiderable 
and  in  1204,  utterly  discouraged,  they  gave  wav  to 
Peter  of  Castelnau  and  the  monk  Rodolph,  who 
were  afterwards  joined  by  Arnold, Abbot  of  Citeaux. 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  27 

Failure  of  Papal  Legates 

At  Montpellier  St.  Dominic  and  Don  Diego  joined 
the  missionaries  sent  by  Innocent,  whom  they  found 
in  deep  discouragement  over  the  poor  fruits  of  their 
labors.  They  were  unanimously  in  favor  of  draw¬ 
ing  up  a  frank  statement  of  their  failure  and  des¬ 
patching  the  same  to  Rome,  with  the  request  that 
they  be  relieved  of  their  mission  among  the  heretics. 
Before  doing  so,  however,  they  consulted  the  newly- 
arrived  missionaries.  From  them  they  learned  in 
no  uncertain  terms  the  cause  of  their  failure.  One 
of  the  chief  sources  of  influence  possessed  by  the 
leaders  of  the  Albigenses  was  their  affectation  of 
piety  and  mortification.  Their  pretentious  poverty 
and  austerity  gave  them  a  strong  hold  upon  the 
imagination  of  the  people.  Unfortunately,  in  all- 
too-many  circumstances  the  Catholic  missionaries 
sent  among  them  did  not  possess  the  love  of  evan¬ 
gelical  poverty  and  simplicity  which  their  state  im¬ 
plied.  This  was  also  true  of  the  delegates  at  Mont¬ 
pellier,  who  prosecuted  their  campaign  against  the 
heretics  attended  by  all  the  circumstances  of  feudal 
pomp  and  luxury.  This  in  no  small  measure  ac¬ 
counted  for  the  failure  of  their  mission.  Diego  and 
Dominic  took  in  the  situation  at  a  glance.  Diego, 
voicing  as  he  knew  the  sentiments  of  his  compan¬ 
ion,  fearlessly  informed  the  delegates  that  their 
failure  was  in  a  large  degree  due  to  themselves. 
He  admonished  them  to  dismiss  their  equipages  and 
numerous  attendants,  and  to  conform  to  the  exam¬ 
ple  of  Him  who  first  preached  the  Gospel  on  foot 
and  in  poverty,  destitute  of  all  creature  comforts. 
The  Legates  were  humble  enough  to  accept  this  sal¬ 
utary  if  somewhat  austere  advice  and,  dismissing 


28 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


their  retinue,  plunged  into  the  work  of  their  aposto- 
late  with  new  hope  and  ardor. 

His  Apostolic  Zeal 

9 

Up  to  this  time  St.  Dominic  held  but  a  secondary 
place  in  the  events  narrated.  But  now  that  the 
real,  systematic  work  of  the  apostolate  had  begun, 
though  still  subject  to  Don  Diego,  whom  all  the 
missionaries  had  elected  as  their  director,  by  force 
of  the  very  magnitude  and  success  of  his  work  he 
assumed  the  leading  part.  After  all,  up  to  this  time 
he  was  but  a  simple  priest,  without  episcopal  dig¬ 
nity  or  papal  authority,  other  than  permission  to 
preach.  His  claims  to  distinction  lay  in  his  sterling 
worth,  his  heroic  sanctity.  It  would  seem  that  in 
obscurity  he  awaited  this  hour  which  was  to  inaug¬ 
urate  the  work  of  his  life,  reveal  him,  in  the  words 
of  Dante,  the  “hallowed  wrestler”  of  Christ,  and 
enshrine  his  memory  in  the  grateful  homage  of  the 
universal  Church. 

Into  the  work  of  the  spiritual  crusade  he  plunged 
with  tireless  zeal  and  all  the  burning  ardor  of  his 
heroic  soul.  The  splendid  training  and  vast  erudi¬ 
tion  he  had  acquired  during  the  ten  years  spent  at 
the  University  of  Palencia  now  proved  of  inesti¬ 
mable  value  to  him.  These  advantages,  united  to  a 
natural  gift  of  eloquence  and  supernatural  gifts  of 
grace,  made  him  at  once  the  most  successful 
and  the  most  dreaded  of  all  the  missionaries. 
I  here  was  no  one  who  could  refute  his  arguments, 
no  one  who  could  remain  insensible  to  the  spell  of 
his  eloquence,  no  one  who  could  deny  his  personal 
^nctrty,  no  one  who  could  gainsay  his  fearless  zeal 
or  the  disinterested  character  of  his  apostolate.  Day 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


29 


after  day  he  went  among  them,  pale  and  emaciated 
by  reason  of  his  long  night  vigils  before  the  taber¬ 
nacle  of  some  neighboring  church,  pleading  before 
the  throne  of  mercy  for  the  conversion  of  these  ob¬ 
durate  people.  Once,  when  informed  that  a  band  of 
heretics,  whose  anger  he  had  incurred  by  his  fear¬ 
less  denunciation  of  their  vices,  lay  in  wait  for  him 
at  a  certain  place  to  assassinate  him,  he  deliberately 
approached  that  place,  singing  joyously,  to  the  utter 
amazement  of  his  hidden  enemies. 

The  Miracle  at  Fanjeaux 

Montreal  and  Fanjeaux  were  among  the  first 
places  they  visited.  In  the  latter  city  took  place  the 
first  miracle  recorded  of  his  apostolate  in  Lang¬ 
uedoc.  Public  and  formal  disputations  under  the 
direction  of  an  umpire  were  not  an  unusual  experi¬ 
ence  for  those  who  championed  the  Faith  in  the  land 
of  the  heretics.  Consequently,  they  were  not  taken 
by  surprise  when  challenged  to  a  public  debate  by 
the  Albigenses  of  Fanjeaux.  Among  the  papers 
prepared  by  the  missionaries,  that  of  St.  Dominic 
was  adjudged  the  best,  and  to  him  was  committed 
the  honor  of  defending  the  Faith  against  its  ad¬ 
versaries.  The  disputation  was  held  before  a  large 
audience  and  resulted  in  the  complete  discomfiture 
of  the  heretical  champion.  But  the  umpires  would 
not  render  the  obvious  verdict,  fearing,  no  doubt, 
the  enmity  of  the  heretics  among  whom  they  lived. 
They  called,  instead,  for  a  further  trial,  where  the 
decision  would  be  automatically  rendered — the  trial 
by  fire.  A  large  fire  was  to  be  kindled  into  which 
the  documents  containing  the  respective  arguments 
of  St.  Dominic  and  his  adversary  were  to  be  thrown. 


30 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


The  document  that  remained  undestroyed  was  to  be 
regarded  as  containing  the  truth.  The  necessary 
preparations  were  made,  and  the  papers  of  the  here¬ 
tic,  having  been  cast  into  the  flames,  were  im¬ 
mediately  consumed.  Thereupon  St.  Dominic  cast 
his  defence  also  into  the  fire.  Not  only  did  it 
remain  unharmed,  but  to  the  amazement  of  the 
entire  assembly,  was  immediately  cast  back.  A 
second  and  a  third  time  it  was  thrown  into  the 
flames,  only  in  each  instance  to  be  thrown  out 
again,  thereby  attesting  beyond  doubt  the  divine 
character  of  the  truth  it  contained.  But  even 
as  the  stiff-necked  Jews  refused  to  be  convinced 
of  the  divinity  of  Christ  in  the  presence  of 
the  mighty  miracles  He  performed,  in  like  manner 
the  Albigenses  remained  strongly  rooted  in  their 
errors  even  in  the  presence  of  this  convincing 
phenomenon. 

Institution  of  the  Second  Order 

Montpellier,  Servian,  Beziers  and  Carcassone 
were  in  turn  the  scenes  of  St.  Dominic’s  labors  and 
innumerable  triumphs  for  Christ.  But  Prouille  event¬ 
ually  became  his  headquarters  and  the  place  of  his 
hi  st  foundation.  Among  the  most  enthusiastic  sup¬ 
porters  of  the  Albigensian  heresy  were  many  of  the 
women  of  Languedoc.  A  number  of  these  women 
were  among  the  converts  of  St.  Dominic,  and  from 
them  he  learned  of  the  systematic  methods  em¬ 
ployed  by  the  heretics  to  propagate  their  iniquitous 
and  pernicious  doctrines.  Among  these  means,  not 
the  least  effective  was  the  erection  of  heretical 
convents  which  offered  special  inducements  to  the 
children  of  the  better  class  who  were  about  to  begin 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


31 


their  education.  But  their  real  purpose  was  to  in¬ 
oculate  these  children  with  the  virus  of  their  heret¬ 
ical  beliefs.  Moreover,  a  serious  difficulty  con¬ 
fronted  St.  Dominic  in  safeguarding  his  female  con¬ 
verts  from  the  danger  of  relapsing  into  heresy. 
Left  in  the  homes  of  their  heretical  relatives,  they 
were  subject  to  incessant  importunities  to  renounce 
their  Faith  and  relapse  into  their  former  beliefs.  In 
order  to  avoid  both  of  these  dangers  the  saint  con¬ 
ceived  the  idea  of  establishing  a  community  of  nuns 
which  would  at  once  give  protection  to  the  women 
converted  from  heresy,  and  afford  proper  religious 
instruction  for  the  children  of  the  more  prosperous 
class,  who  were  patronizing  the  convents  of  the 
heretics.  The  Bishop  of  Toulouse,  to  whom  St. 
Dominic  presented  his  plan,  warmly  endorsed  it,  and 
towards  the  end  of  1206  turned  over  to  the  saint 
“the  Church  of  St.  Mary  of  Prouille  and  the  ad¬ 
jacent  land  to  the  extent  of  thirty  feet.”  This  gen¬ 
erous  gift  was  made  in  behalf  of  the  women  who 
were  already  converted,  or  should  be  converted  in 
the  future.  This  community  of  nuns,  which  was  to 
be  known  as  the  Second  Order  of  St.  Dominic,  was 
therefore  the  first  in  priority  of  foundation.  The 
religious  rule  which  the  founder  drew  up  for  the 
community  at  Prouille,  and  afterwards  for  that  of 
St.  Sixtus  at  Rome,  has  guided  to  heights  of  per¬ 
fection  for  over  seven  hundred  years  the  self-sac¬ 
rificing  lives  of  the  members  of  the  Second  Order. 
They  are  a  cloistered  order  and,  therefore,  contem- 
platives  devoted  to  lives  of  mortification  and  prayer. 
Only  such  work  is  engaged  in  as  may  be  necessary 
for  their  maintenance  and  may  be  done  entirely 
within  the  cloister. 


32 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Adversities 

When  Don  Diego  was  despatched  by  Innocent  III 
on  his  mission  to  the  Albigenses,  it  was  for  a  period 
of  only  two  years,  for  he  still  remained  Bishop  of 
Osma.  That  time  having  now  expired,  the  holy 
bishop  took  his  departure  from  Languedoc  and  set 
out  for  his  own  diocese  in  Spain.  This  was  in  1207. 
On  the  departure  of  Don  Diego  St.  Dominic  found 
himself  practically  alone.  Over  the  few  who  re¬ 
mained  with  him  he  exercised  no  real  canonical  au- 
thoritv,  since  both  he  and  Don  Diego  labored  under 
the  authority  of  the  Legates,  Peter  of  Castelnau 
and  Arnold,  Abbot  of  Citeaux.  They  alone  received 
their  authority  directly  from  the  Holy  See. 

The  departure  of  Don  Diego,  his  friend  and  coun¬ 
sellor  of  many  years,  and  the  desertion  of  the 
greater  part  of  his  fellow  missionaries,  only  had 
the  effect  of  stimulating  St.  Dominic  to  greater  ef¬ 
fort.  To  the  faithful  William  Claret  of  Pamiers  and 
Dominic  of  Segovia,  who  had  remained  steadfast, 
he  added  several  other  zealous  preachers  anxious 
for  the  reign  of  Christ  upon  earth.  Indefatigably 
they  labored  under  the  direction  of  the  inspired 
Dominic.  Day  after  day,  and  through  many  a  long 
night,  they  preached,  disputed  and  prayed  in  the 
cause  of  Christian  truth.  But  though  they  made 
many  converts,  the  general  situation  went  from  bad 
to  worse.  Heresy,  now  backed  almost  openly  by 
the  secular  authority,  became  brazen  and  defiant. 
St.  Dominic  and  his  companions  more  frequently 
met  with  insults  and  derision  than  with  a  respect¬ 
ful  hearing.  They  even  began  to  experience  diffi¬ 
culty  in  obtaining  the  meager  fare  necessary  to  sus¬ 
tain  life.  It  was  in  this  crisis  that  the  good  Bishop 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


33 


Foulques  of  Toulouse  again  came  to  their  assist¬ 
ance.  The  benefice  of  Fanjeaux,  with  all  its  tithes 
and  first  fruits,  was  conveyed  to  St.  Dominic,  that 
he  and  his  associates  might  have  a  fixed  abode  when 
resting  from  their  missionary  labors,  and  some 
guarantee  of  support  when  preaching  among  the 
heretics.  What  human  foresight  could  have  dis¬ 
cerned  at  the  time  that  this  Dominic  Guzman,  now 
little  more  than  a  parish  priest,  would  one  day  be 
the  head  and  inspiration  of  a  wonderfully  organized 
apostolate  as  universal  as  the  Church  it  would  loy¬ 
ally  serve ;  that  in  his  own  brief  day  he  would  num¬ 
ber  his  associates  by  thousands  and  recruit  several 
hundred  of  these  from  the  most  learned  men  of 
the  universities,  and  would  fill  the  Church  with  the 
praise  of  their  splendid  deeds?  Yet  such,  in  the  de¬ 
signs  of  Providence,  was  to  be  his  achievement. 

The  Inquisition 

There  are  two  things  in  the  life  of  St.  Dominic 
around  which  much  controversy  has  been  carried 
on,  and  which  demand  at  least  a  passing  notice — 
the  Inquisition  and  the  Rosary. 

We  must  preface  this  chapter  with  the  remark 
that  the  Inquisition  here  treated  of  is  neither  the 
Roman  Inquisition  (which  was  not  established  by 
Gregory  IX  for  more  than  ten  years  after  the  death 
of  St.  Dominic)  nor  the  Spanish  institution  of  that 
name,  the  pet  aversion  of  rural  controversialists. 
That  St.  Dominic  was  not  the  founder  of  the  Inqui¬ 
sition  is  historically  certain,  for  the  reason  that  it 
began  its  operations  in  1198  while  he  was  yet  an 
unknown  canon  of  Osma.  St.  Dominic  arrived  in 
Languedoc  in  1205.  The  first  Legates  of  Innocent 


34 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


III,  Guy  and  Rainier,  upon  whom  the  Holy  See  con¬ 
ferred  full  inquisitorial  power  against  the  Albi- 
genses,  began  the  exercise  of  this  power  in  1198, 
seven  years  before  the  canon  of  Osma  inaugurated 
his  missionary  career.  Their  successors,  the  Abbot 
of  Citeaux,  Peter  of  Castelnau  and  the  monk  Ro- 
dolph,  were  named  Inquisitors  in  1204,  and  were  in 
the  full  exercise  of  their  authority  when  the  Bishop 
of  Osma  and  his  canon  joined  them  in  1205  at 
Montpellier. 

Furthermore,  it  is  certain  that  he  was  never  offi¬ 
cially  designated  by  the  Holy  See,  so  far  as  extant 
documents  can  prove,  as  one  of  the  Inquisitors  com¬ 
missioned  to  labor  among  the  Albigenses.  What¬ 
ever  authority  he  enjoyed  was  delegated  by  the  Cis¬ 
tercian  Legates,  in  whose  name  he  expressly  exer¬ 
cised  it.  Thus,  for  instance,  in  the  following  official 
document  (1208)  by  which  he  admits  to  penance 
Ponce  Roger,  an  old  offender  in  heresy  whom  he 
had  converted,  he  expressly  states  that  he  acts  in 
the  name  and  by  the  authority  of  the  Abbot  of 
Citeaux:  “To  all  the  faithful  in  Christ  to  whom 
these  presents  may  come,  Brother  Dominic,  canon 
of  Osma,  the  least  of  preachers,  wishes  health  in  the 
Lord.  By  the  authority  of  the  Lord  Abbot  of 
Citeaux,  who  has  committed  to  us  this  office,  we 
have  reconciled  to  the  Church  the  bearer  of  these 
presents,  Ponce  Roger,  converted  by  the  grace  of 
God  from  heresy  to  the  Faith,  etc.”  In  this  docu¬ 
ment,  in  which  he  defines  his  authority  and  an¬ 
nounces  his  titles,  he  distinctly  asserts  that  his  pow¬ 
ers  are  not  ordinary  but  delegated  by  the  Abbot  of 
Citeaux;  and  while  he  announces  himself  as  a  canon 
of  Osma,  he  is  silent  concerning  the  title  of  Inquis¬ 
itor,  which  would  certainly  not  be  the  case  were  he 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


35 


possessed  of  it.  Towards  the  end  of  the  year  1214, 
when  his  apostolate  in  Languedoc  was  almost 
finished,  he  issued  another  letter  authorizing  Wil¬ 
liam  Raymond,  a  master-furrier  of  Toulouse,  to  ad¬ 
mit  to  his  house  without  prejudice  to  himself  an 
erstwhile  heretic.  In  this  document,  in  which  he 
refers  to  himself  merely  as  a  canon  of  Osma,  he 
again  asserts  that  he  acts  subject  to  the  approval  of 
the  Legate.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  through¬ 
out  his  entire  apostolate  among  the  Albigenses  he 
neither  bears  the  title  of  Inquisitor  nor  exercises 
the  authority  proper  to  the  office. 

That  St.  Dominic  did  participate  in  inquisitorial 
activity  is  incontrovertible ;  but  his  influence  and 
his  office  were  always  on  the  side  of  mercy.  All  the 
acts  of  his  life  among  the  heretics  that  are  known 
to  us  are  acts  of  absolution  and  of  reconciliation 
with  the  Church.  In  the  judging  and  condemning 
of  impenitent  heretics  he  had  no  part.  That  was  the 
function  of  the  secular  power.  His  was  the  duty  of 
assigning  canonical  penances  to  those  who  re¬ 
nounced  heresy  and  renewed  their  allegiance  to  the 
Church,  and  this,  a  part  of  the  Church’s  penitentiary 
discipline,  pertained  to  her  ministery  of  reconciliation. 
It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  those  anti-Catholic 
writers  who  have  depicted  St.  Dominic  as  a  cruel 
monster  stalking  up  and  down  the  land  with  the 
blood-lust  in  his  heart,  searching  out  obstinate  her¬ 
etics  for  execution  at  the  stake,  dipped  their  pens  in 
falsehood  and  in  hate  rather  than  in  the  truth  of 
history. 

The  Rosary 

In  the  whole  life  of  St.  Dominic  there  is  nothing, 
perhaps,  that  so  endears  him  to  the  great  body  of 


36 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  faithful  as  the  beautiful  devotion  of  the  Rosary. 
Tradition  accounts  for  the  origin  of  this  prayer  in 
the  following  manner:  One  night  as  St.  Dominic 
was  sweetly  complaining  to  the  Mother  of  Cod  of 
what,  to  his  ardent  soul,  appeared  the  poor  fruits  of 
his  labors,  she  graciously  deigned  to  answer  him. 
Making  known  to  him  what  we  now  call  the  Ro¬ 
sary,  she  bade  him  go  forth  among  the  heretics  and 
preach  and  teach  its  use  everywhere.  She  promised 
him  that  under  its  sweet  influence  heresy  would 
yield,  and  that  love  for  her  Divine  Son  would  once 
again  burn  brightly  in  the  souls  of  those  who  now 
despised  Him.  Tradition,  too,  records  the  fidelity 
with  which  St.  Dominic  fulfilled  his  mission  and  the 
complete  success  that  attended  his  efforts.  Such  is 
the  story  of  the  origin  of  the  Rosary, accepted  by  the 
Church  as  authentic  for  now  seven  hundred  years. 

But  in  our  day  the  spirit  of  captious  criticism  is 
abroad  in  the  land,  and  there  are  some  few  self- 
sufficient  historians  who  would  reject  this  univer¬ 
sally  accepted  tradition  because,  forsooth,  it  is  not 
corroborated  by  the  saint’s  contemporaries  and  by 
them  reduced  to  the  form  of  duly  authenticated  his¬ 
torical  documents.  It  is  certainly  strange  to  hear 
tradition  discounted  as  a  witness  to  the  truth  by 
those  who  claim  familiarity  with  the  sources  of 
Catholic  doctrine.  When  this  doubt  was  proposed 
to  Benedict  XIV,  one  of  the  most  learned  among  the 
successors  of  St.  Peter,  his  answer  was  that  the 
opinion  that  St.  Dominic  was  the  author  of  the  Ro¬ 
sary  rested  on  “a  most  solid  foundation.”  Again, 
he  writes:  “You  ask  if  St.  Dominic  was  really  the 
institutor  of  the  Rosary ;  you  declare  yourself  per¬ 
plexed  and  full  of  doubt  upon  the  subject.  But  what 
account  do  you  make  of  the  decisions  of  so  many 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


37 


Sovereign  Pontiffs — of  Leo  X,  of  Pius  V,  of  Greg¬ 
ory  XIII,  of  Sixtus  V,  or  Clement  VIII,  of  Alexan¬ 
der  VII,  of  Innocent  XI,  of  Clement  XI,  of  Innocent 
XIII,  of  Benedict  XIII  and  of  so  many  others  who 
are  unanimous  in  declaring  the  Rosary  to  have  been 
instituted  by  St.  Dominic  himself?”  Leo  XIII  of 
our  own  day,  one  of  the  most  learned  men  of  his 
age,  speaking  of  the  origin  of  the  Rosary,  says : 
“Enlightened  from  on  high,  he  (St.  Dominic)  un¬ 
derstood  that  this  prayer  (the  Rosary)  would  be  the 
most  powerful  weapon  for  overcoming  the  enemies 
of  the  Church  and  defeating  their  impiety.  And  the 
event  proved  that  he  was  right ;  for,  in  fact,  the  use 
of  this  prayer  having  been  spread  and  practiced  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  instruction  and  institution  of  St. 
Dominic,  piety,  faith  and  concord  once  more  flour¬ 
ished.  The  enterprise  of  the  heretics  failed  and 
their  power  gradually  decayed.”*  With  the  citation 
of  these  illustrious  witnesses,  and  without  entering 
into  a  more  technical  defence  of  the  truth  of  the 
Rosary  tradition,  we  may  dismiss  this  unwarranted 
criticism  and  unite  with  the  universal  Church  in 
acclaiming  St.  Dominic  as  the  distinguished  author 
and  propagator  of  this  beautiful  devotion. 

The  Crusade 

What  would  have  been  the  ultimate  success  at¬ 
tending  the  efforts  of  this  little  band  of  apostles 
under  the  direction  of  St.  Dominic  if  they  had  been 
allowed  to  prosecute  their  saving  mission  undis¬ 
turbed,  must  be  forever  a  matter  of  conjecture ;  for 
at  this  time  an  event  took  place  which  changed  the 

•  Rosary  Encyclical,  1883.  See  also  “St.  Dominic  and 
the  Rosary,"  by  Rev.  A.  M.  Skelly,  O.  P. 


38 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


whole  aspect  of  affairs.  On  the  15th  of  January, 
1208,  Peter  of  Castelnau,  Papal  Legate,  was  foully 
murdered  by  a  squire  of  Raymond,  Count  of  Tou¬ 
louse.  The  latter  was  a  renegade  to  his  Faith,  the 
protector  of  heretics  and  the  propagator  of  their 
doctrines.  He  had  repeatedly  broken  faith  with  the 
Holy  See  and  secretly  plotted  the  overthrow  of  the 
Church  within  his  territory.  As  the  murder  of  an 
ambassador  was  a  crime  so  heinous  as  to  leave  no 
other  recourse  than  a  call  to  arms,  Innocent  III  re¬ 
luctantly  appealed  to  the  secular  power  to  put  an  end 
to  this  utterly  intolerable  situation.  The  Catholic 
chivalry  of  England  and  northern  France  answered 
his  appealing  cry  and  the  Crusade  was  on.  Under 
the  gallant  leadership  of  Simon  de  Montfort,  Earl 
of  Leicester,  the  war  was  prosecuted  to  a  successful 
issue,  even  though  the  fruits  of  victory  were  not  to 
endure  for  long.  If  the  reader  wonder  that  the 
Vicar  of  Him  whose  advent  the  prophets  foretold 
under  the  title  of  “Prince  of  Peace”  should  appeal 
to  physical  force,  let  him  remember  that  the  Albi- 
gensian  heresy  was  not  merely  an  attack  on  relig¬ 
ion,  but  a  conspiracy  against  society,  government, 
and  even  civilization  itself.  One  of  the  most  hostile 
writers  that  ever  attacked  the  Church  has  said :  “If 
the  Albigenses  had  triumphed,  Europe  would  have 
returned  to  the  horrors  of  barbarism.”* 

St.  Dominic  was  a  constant  witness  of  the  scenes 
of  violence  and  bloodshed  which  followed  the  break¬ 
ing  out  of  hostilities,  and  which  must  have  sorely 
distressed  his  sympathetic  heart.  But  instead  of 
putting  a  stop  to  his  zealous  efforts,  the  crusade 
called  for  even  greater  activity  on  the  part  of  the 

*  Lea,  History  of  the  Inquisition,”  Book  I,  p.  120. 


' 


» 


St.  Dominic  Preaching  to  the  Albigenses 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


39 


saint.  The  active  part,  however,  which  he  took  dur¬ 
ing  these  stormy  times  was  exclusively  a  spiritual 
one,  and  therefore  served  the  cause  of  mercy. 

It  is  asserted  by  many  historians  that  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  risk  his  own  life  by  throwing  himself 
into  the  midst  of  the  conflict,  during  the  sack  of 
Beziers,  to  plead  for  the  lives  of  the  women  and 
children,  the  aged  and  the  infirm.  Whether  or  not 
this  be  so,  it  is  certain  that  during  the  period  of  the 
crusade  we  usually  find  him  following  the  victorious 
army,  wielding  the  sword  of  the  spirit  while  others 
plied  the  blood-stained  weapons  of  war.  He  was 
commonly  in  the  wake  of  the  advancing  army, 
preaching  the  Gospel,  reconciling  such  heretics  as 
had  escaped  the  arms  of  the  crusaders,  with  the 
Church  they  had  abandoned. 

It  was  probably  in  1204  that  St.  Dominic  first 
came  in  contact  with  Simon  de  Montfort  and 
formed  with  him  that  close  friendship  which  lasted 
till  the  chivalrous  knight  fell  mortally  wounded  be¬ 
neath  the  walls  of  Toulouse,  June  25,  1218.  They 
were  together  at  the  siege  of  Lavour  (1211)  and 
again  at  the  capitulation  of  Le  Penne  d’Ajen  (1212). 
It  was  at  the  request  of  De  Montfort,  whose  living 
faith  was  not  a  whit  less  aggressive  than  his  martial 
spirit,  that  we  find  him  laboring  for  the  restoration 
of  religion  and  morality  at  Pamiers,  in  the  latter 
part  of  1212.  On  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Muret  he 
sits  with  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  Christian 
forces  in  the  council  of  war  preceding  the  taking  of 
that  city.  While  the  conflict  raged,  he  knelt  before 
the  altar  of  Saint-Jacques  earnestly  imploring  the 
God  of  Battles  that  He  might  vouchsafe  victory  to 
the  Catholic  arms.  To  such  an  extent  did  Simon  de 
Montfort  attribute  to  Dominic’s  prayers  his  great 
3 


40 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


success  before  Muret  that,  it  is  said,  he  erected  in 
the  Church  of  Saint- Jacques  a  chapel  which  he  ded¬ 
icated  to  Our  Lady  of  the  Rosary. 

Refusal  of  Episcopal  Honors 

In  the  meantime,  the  fame  of  St.  Dominic’s  sanc¬ 
tity,  learning  and  zeal  was  growing  day  by  day,  and 
more  than  one  diocese  whose  episcopal  throne  was 
vacant  sought  to  secure  him  as  its  bishop.  In  all, 
three  distinct  efforts  were  made  to  invest  him  with 
the  episcopal  dignity.  In  1212  he  was  elected 
Bishop  of  Beziers,  but  immediately  refused  the 
honor.  Shortly  after  this  he  again  rejected  the 
honors  of  the  episcopate,  to  which  he  had  been 
called  by  the  canons  of  Saint  Lizier  when  the  See 
of  Comminges  had  been  made  vacant  by  the  trans¬ 
fer  of  Bishop  Garcias  de  L’Orte  to  the  See  of  Auch. 
The  third  time  he  felt  called  upon  to  refuse  the 
mitre  was  when  the  above-named  bishop  sought  to 
have  him  placed  at  the  head  of  the  Diocese  of  Na¬ 
varre.  But  nothing  could  tempt  the  Apostle  of  Lan¬ 
guedoc  to  accept  honors  of  any  kind.  Indeed,  he 
had  a  kind  of  holy  horror  for  distinctions  of  that 
sort,  and  often  said  that  he  would  rather  take  flight 
in  the  night,  with  nothing  but  his  staff,  than  accept 
the  episcopal  office.  He  never  for  a  moment  lost 
sight  of  the  project,  formed  eleven  years  before,  of 
founding  an  order  for  the  extirpation  of  heresy  and 
the  propagation  of  religious  truth.  He  would  allow 
no  personal  glory  to  deflect  him  from  this  purpose, 
to  which  he  believed  himself  elected  by  a  divine 
vocation.  He  could  not,  however,  entirely  escape 
episcopal  responsibility,  and  during  the  Lent  of  1213 
Guy,  Bishop  of  Carcassonne,  induced  him  to  act  as 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREtACHERS 


41 


his  vicar  general  during  an  absence  from  his  diocese 
necessitated  by  his  obligation  of  preaching  the 
crusade. 

The  First  Community  House 

At  Carcassonne  St.  Dominic  resumed  his  preach¬ 
ing  with  his  usual  extraordinary  success.  The  year 
1214  found  him  again  in  Toulouse.  His  little  band 
of  followers  had  not  grown  very  much  since  he  had 
become  their  leader  on  the  departure  of  Diego,  six 
years  before.  In  fact,  they  now  numbered  but 
seven,  all  told.  This,  however,  did  not  prevent  him 
from  setting  about  the  realization  of  his  life-long 
dream  of  founding  an  order  for  the  conversion  of 
heretics  and  the  spread  of  Christian  truth.  Over 
nine  years’  experience  in  combating  the  Albigenses 
had  further  convinced  him  that  the  only  way  the 
heretics  could  be  opposed  successfully  was  by  an 
organization  of  preachers  consecrated  to  that  work 
and  prepared  for  its  accomplishment  by  long  years 
of  study.  But  how  was  this  to  be  realized?  His 
little  community  possessed  no  fixed  place  of  abode ; 
the  foundation  at  Fanjeaux  was  not  a  community 
house.  Their  only  sources  of  revenue,  and  they 
meager  enough,  were  the  tithes  conferred  by  the 
Bishop  of  Toulouse  and  a  donation  made  by  Simon 
de  Montfort.  , 

In  the  following  year  a  piece  of  good  fortune 
came  to  St.  Dominic’s  little  band  of  preachers  that, 
all  unknown  to  them,  was  to  be  the  first  step  to¬ 
wards  the  realization  of  the  leader’s  dream  of  per¬ 
petuating  their  work  through  the  medium  of  a  re¬ 
ligious  order.  Brother  Peter  Seila,  a  wealthy  cit¬ 
izen  of  Toulouse  who  had  placed  himself  under  St. 
Dominic’s  direction,  conveyed  to  his  spiritual 


42 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


director  a  commodious  house  for  the  use  of  himself 
and  his  associates.  While  St.  Dominic  might  claim 
Fanjeaux  as  his  nominal  home,  the  community  as 
such,  up  to  this  time,  possessed  no  fixed  quarters, 
trusting  to  Providence  to  provide  for  them  in  such 
places  as  their  preaching  might  lead  them  to.  This 
gift,  which  was  to  hold  an  unique  place  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Order,  was  made  about  Easter,  1215. 

Approval  as  a  Diocesan  Community 

The  next  step  was  even  more  important.  As  a 
religious  community  the  little  band  of  missionaries 
enjoyed  no  canonical  standing.  Their  only  bond  of 
union  was  their  common  zeal  for  the  honor  and 
glory  of  God’s  house  and  their  desire  to  labor  under 
the  direction  of  St.  Dominic.  However  effectively 
this  spirit  of  good  will  might  unite  them  for  the 
present,  it  offered  no  guarantee  for  the  future, 
when,  as  they  hoped,  their  numbers  would  rapidly 
increase.  To  meet  this  situation  and  supply  its 
needs  their  devoted  friend,  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse, 
again  came  to  their  assistance.  By  an  enactment  of 
July,  1215,  at  the  request  of  St.  Dominic,  he  canon¬ 
ically  established  the  community  in  his  diocese  as 
a  religious  congregation  whose  mission  should  be 
the  propagation  of  Christian  truth  and  morals  and 
tht  extirpation  of  heresy.  The  saint  now  had  an 
apptoved  organization  of  earnest  apostles  to  work 
'with,  and  in  that  organization  he  possessed  a 
guarantee  of  stability  and  the  highest  efficiency  in 
the  fulfilment  of  their  mission.  Moreover,  in  the 
house  given  them  by  Peter  Seila  they  had  a  home 
'where  they  could  follow  the  exercises  of  the  relig- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


43 


ious  life  when  not  actually  engaged  in  the  work  of 
preaching. 

Council  of  the  Lateran 

Yet,  notwithstanding  the  greatly  improved  cir¬ 
cumstances  of  his  little  community,  how  far  was  he 
still  from  the  realization  of  that  splendid  dream  he 
had  when  for  the  first  time,  some  twelve  years  be¬ 
fore,  he  came  in  contact  with  the  blighting  influence 
of  the  Albigensian  heresy !  He  had  then  planned  a 
worldwide  apostolate ;  and  now  he  had  but  a  sin¬ 
gle  small  diocese  in  which  to  labor.  He  had  dreamed 
of  an  unfettered  service  of  preaching  throughout  the 
universal  Church ;  and  here  he  was  hobbled  with  the 
responsibilities  of  a  parish  priest  and  his  obedience 
to  the  Bishop  of  Languedoc.  But  in  the  inscrutable 
ways  of  Providence  things  were  speedily  develop¬ 
ing,  unknown  to  our  saint,  for  the  fullest  realization 
of  his  project. 

In  September  of  this  same  year  the  Bishop  of 
Toulouse  set  out  for  Rome,  accompanied  by  St. 
Dominic  as  his  theologian,  to  attend  an  ecumenical 
council  set  for  the  following  November.  The  ex¬ 
press  purpose  of  this  council  was  to  legislate  for 
the  improvement  of  morals,  the  suppression  of  her¬ 
esy  and  the  quickening  of  the  Faith.  In  fact,  it  pro¬ 
posed  for  its  own  consideration  the  very  things  that 
St.  Dominic  had  made  the  end  and  aim  of  his  Order. 
Here,  surely,  was  a  splendid  opportunity  for  press¬ 
ing  the  cause  of  his  Institute,  and  for  soliciting  that 
papal  sanction  which  would  invest  it  with  an  apos¬ 
tolate  coextensive  with  the  universal  Church.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  would  it  not  be  presumptuous 
for  him  to  offer  himself  and  his  little  unknown  com¬ 
munity  to  serve  the  momentous  purpose  that  had 


44 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


necessitated  the  convening  of  an  ecumenical  coun¬ 
cil?  Outside  of  Languedoc  he  and  his  associates 
had  probably  never  been  heard  of.  Indeed,  they 
were  only  a  band  of  diocesan  missionaries  whose 
corporate  character  was  but  a  few  months  old. 
Would  he  dare  ask  in  behalf  of  this  Institute  a  char¬ 
ter  for  a  universal  apostolate  of  preaching?  In  the 
eyes  of  human  prudence  such  a  request  seemed  un¬ 
reasonable  even  to  fatuity.  But,  then,  the  entire  life 
of  St.  Dominic  was  marked  by  deeds,  rich  in  results, 
which  were  not  conformable  to  the  dictates  of  hu¬ 
man  prudence.  He  resolved,  therefore,  on  his  ar¬ 
rival  in  Rome  to  present  his  petition  to  the  Sov¬ 
ereign  Pontiff. 

Disappointment 

Scarcely  had  the  assembled  prelates  begun  their 
deliberations  when  something  happened  which 
greatly  encouraged  him  and  strongly  confirmed  him 
in  his  purpose.  The  council  bitterly  arraigned  the 
bishops  for  their  neglect  of  the  work  of  preaching, 
which  was  essentially  an  episcopal  prerogative,  as 
well  as  obligation.  It  instructed  them  to  associate 
with  them  in  the  apostolate  of  the  Word  capable  and 
worthy  priests  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  people. 
This  was  precisely  what  St.  Dominic  was  prepared 
to  do — to  offer  his  associates  as  capable  and  worthy 
men  to  share  with  the  episcopate  the  right  of 
preaching,  at  the  same  time  enjoying  freedom  from 
the  ordinary  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops  in  whose 
territory  they  might  labor.  Furthermore,  Innocent 
III  had  already  taken  the  convent  at  Prouille  under 
his  protection.  The  action  of  the  Council,  therefore, 
had  already  been  anticipated  by  the  Bishop  of  Tou¬ 
louse  in  associating  with  him  St.  Dominic  and  his 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


45 


brethren  in  the  work  of  preaching.  And  yet  it  was 
a  bold  and  original  scheme  the  saint  wished  to  pro¬ 
pose  to  the  Sovereign  Pontiff — to  give  to  an  un¬ 
known  association,  but  a  few  months  old,  freedom 
from  all  parish  restrictions  and  responsibilities,  ex¬ 
emption  from  the  jurisdiction  of  bishops,  and  a 
charter  to  preach  throughout  the  entire  world ! 

And,  then,  there  was  the  recent  decree  of  the 
Council  forbidding  the  approval  of  any  new  re¬ 
ligious  rules  or  orders.  The  preceding  century  and 
a  half  had  witnessed  the  institution  of  no  fewer  than 
twelve  new  orders ;  and  Innocent  III  himself  had 
approved  of  two  in  the  last  seven  years.  It  is  no 
wonder,  then,  that  the  Father  of  Christendom  hesi¬ 
tated  when  the  little  community  of  St.  Dominic 
sought  his  sanction.  But  the  Almighty  was  pre¬ 
paring  a  way  to  bring  the  matter  to  a  successful 
issue.  Constantine  of  Orvieto  describes  the  incident 
as  follows :  “One  night  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  sees 
in  his  sleep  a  divine  vision  in  which  the  Lateran 
Church  is  rent  and  shattered.  Trembling  and  sad¬ 
dened  by  this  spectacle,  Innocent  sees  Dominic 
hasten  up  and  endeavor,  by  placing  himself  against 
it,  to  prevent  it  from  falling.  The  prudent  and  wise 
Pontiff  is  at  first  amazed  by  this  marvel,  but  he 
quickly  grasps  its  significance,  and  without  further 
delay  praises  the  scheme  of  the  man  of  God  and 
graciously  grants  his  request.”  In  this  manner,  ac¬ 
cording  to  tradition,  it  was  given  to  the  holy  Pon¬ 
tiff  to  understand  that  the  contemplated  order  was 
pleasing  to  heaven,  and  would  eventually  become 
one  of  the  most  powerful  supporters  of  Holy  Church 
as  well  as  a  most  efficient  promoter  of  her  mission 
upon  earth. 


46 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


However,  Innocent  III  could  not  completely 
ignore  the  recent  law  of  the  council  forbidding  the 
institution  of  any  new  orders.  Accordingly,  he  in¬ 
structed  St.  Dominic  to  return  to  Prouille  and  select 
one  of  the  already  existing  rules  for  the  govern¬ 
ment  of  his  Order  and  thus  comply  with  the  spirit 
of  the  law.  On  the  saint’s  return  to  Rome,  he  prom¬ 
ised  that  the  new  Institute  should  receive  his  full 
and  formal  approbation.  Thus,  the  ultimate  success 
of  St.  Dominic’s  project  was  guaranteed,  though  the 
full  joy  of  its  realization  was  deferred. 

Meeting  of  St.  Dominic  and  St.  Francis 

It  was  during  this  visit  to  Rome  that  St.  Dominic 
met  for  the  first  time  the  seraphic  St.  Francis. 
Having  seen  him  in  a  vision  one  night,  the  next  day, 
when  they  met  in  one  of  the  churches  of  Rome,  he 
recognized  him  and,  rushing  up  to  him,  embraced 
him.  St.  Francis  was  in  Rome  on  the  same  mission 
as  himself  —  to  obtain  papal  approval  of  his  Or¬ 
der  of  Friars  Minor.  As  a  result  of  this  meeting,  an 
intimate  friendship  sprang  up  between  these  two 
patriarchs  which  continued  throughout  their  lives 
and  has  been  perpetuated  by  their  spiritual  children 
even  to  the  present  day.  “The  kiss  of  St.  Dominic 
and  St.  Francis,”  as  Lacordaire  expresses  it,  “has 
been  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation  by 
the  lips  of  their  posterity.  The  friendship  of  youth 
still  unites  the  Preaching  Friars  to  the  Minorites 
*  *  *  they  have  gone  to  God  by  the  same  paths, 
as  two  precious  perfumes  gently  reach  the  same 
spot  in  the  heavens.” 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


47 


Innocent  III  Names  the  Order 

It  is  unique  in  the  history  of  religious  orders  that 
an  institute  should  receive  its  official  name  from  one 
reigning  Pontiff  and  be  formally  approved  by  an¬ 
other.  Such  was  the  experience  of  the  Order  of 
Preachers.  Shortly  after  the  departure  of  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  from  Rome,  Innocent  had  occasion  to  write  to 
the  holy  patriarch.  When  the  note  was  finished,  the 
Pontiff  directed  that  it  be  addressed  “To  Brother 
Dominic  and  his  companions.”  After  a  moment’s 
deliberation  he  said:  “No,  do  not  write  that;  let  it 
be,  ‘To  Brother  Dominic  and  those  who  preach  with 
him  in  the  country  of  Toulouse.’  ”  Correcting  him¬ 
self  yet  a  second  time,  he  instructed  his  secretary  to 
address  the  communication  “To  Master  Dominic 
and  the  Brothers  Preachers.”  Accordingly,  when 
in  the  following  year  Pope  Honorius  confirmed  the 
Order  he  employed  as  its  official  title  the  name  un¬ 
der  which  it  was  first  addressed  by  his  illustrious 
predecessor.  “The  Order  of  Brothers  Preachers,” 
or,  in  its  simpler  form,  “Friars  Preachers,”  has  been 
its  official  title  from  the  beginning  of  its  career. 
This,  in  turn,  has  been  further  condensed  to  “Order 
of  Preachers.”  Hence  the  letters  “O.  P.”  which  fol¬ 
low  the  name  of  every  Dominican. 

Selection  of  a  Rule 

Having  received  from  Innocent  III  the  promise 
of  approbation  for  his  Order,  nothing  remained  for 
St.  Dominic  to  do  but  to  return  to  Toulouse  and 
arrange  for  the  selection  of  a  rule.  It  was  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  founder  that 


48 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


instead  of  arbitrarily  choosing  a  rule  himself  he 
should  call  his  brethren,  who  were  to  be  subject  to 
its  direction,  into  consultation,  that  they  might  ex¬ 
press  their  views  on  so  weighty  a  matter.  During 
his  absence  these  brethren  had  increased  in  number 
from  six  to  sixteen.  The  choice  of  a  rule  was  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  momentous  importance  and  one  not  to  be 
approached  lightly  or  with  merely  the  wisdom  of 
human  prudence.  Consequently,  their  deliberations 
were  preceded  by  the  celebration  of  the  Mass  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  in  the  little  chapel  of  Our  Lady  at  Prou- 
ille.  As  a  result  of  these  devout  considerations  the 
Rule  of  St.  Augustine  was  chosen  to  be  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Order.  Not  the  least 
of  the  reasons  that  influenced  them  in  the  selec¬ 
tion  of  this  Rule  was  its  flexibility,  which  permitted 
its  easy  adaptation  to  all  the  future  needs  of  the 
Order.  To  this  rule  was  to  be  added,  of  course, 
their  own  “Constitutions.” 

Confirmation  of  the  Order 

As  soon  as  the  brethren  were  settled  in  their  com¬ 
munity  life  under  the  Rule  of  St.  Augustine  and  their 
own  Constitutions,  St.  Dominic  set  out  for  Rome  to 
obtain  the  promised  confirmation  from  Innocent  III. 
Ihis,  his  third  journey  to  Rome,  was  begun  in 
August,  1216,  about  five  months  after  the  choosing 
of  the  rule.  He  had  not  gone  far  on  his  way  when 
he  received  the  distressing  news  of  the  death  of  his 
good  friend  Innocent  III.  Honorius  III  had  been 
elected  his  successor. 

It  was  with  no  little  trepidation  that  St.  Dominic 
learned  of  this  unfortunate  event.  Innocent  was 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


49 


familiar  with  his  plans  and  purposes  and  stood 
ready  to  impart  to  them  his  official  sanction.  But 
what  would  be  their  fate  at  the  hands  of  Honorius, 
to  whom  he  was  a  complete  stranger?  He  imme¬ 
diately  took  refuge  in  that  constant  and  fervent 
prayer  which  was  his  comfort  in  every  trial.  Nor 
was  he  disappointed.  Honorius  received  him  most 
graciously,  assuring  him  that  he  would  keep  all  the 
promises  made  by  his  predecessor.  Pursuant  of 
these  promises,  the  successor  of  Innocent  confirmed 
the  Order  of  Preachers  in  two  bulls  issued  Decem¬ 
ber  22,  1216.  The  first  of  these  bulls,  perhaps  the 
shortest  by  which  any  order  was  ever  confirmed, 
was  as  follows : 

“Honorius,  Bishop,  servant  of  the  servants  of  God,  to 
our  dear  son,  Dominic,  prior  of  St.  Romain,  of  Toulouse, 
and  to  your  brethren  who  have  made,  or  shall  make,  pro¬ 
fession  of  regular  life,  health  and  apostolic  benediction. 
We,  considering  that  the  brethren  of  your  Order  will  be 
the  champions  of  the  Faith  and  the  true  light  of  the  world, 
do  confirm  the  Order  in  all  its  land  and  possessions  pres¬ 
ent  and  to  come;  and  we  take  the  Order  itself,  with  all  its 
goods  and  rights,  under  our  protection  and  government. 

“Given  at  St.  Sabina,  at  Rome,  on  the  11th  of  the  Kal¬ 
ends  of  January,  the  first  year  of  our  pontificate. 

“Honorius.” 

Thus,  after  many  years  of  obstacles,  discourage¬ 
ments  and  delays,  was  realized  the  dream  of  St. 
Dominic.  He  had  at  last  established  a  real  religious 
Order,  possessing  the  approbation  of  the  Holy  See. 
Its  purpose  was  the  diffusion  of  Catholic  truth  by 
preaching;  its  field  was  coextensive  with  the  uni¬ 
versal  Church.  It  is  true  his  Institute  was  in  power 
and  numbers  but  in  its  earliest  infancy,  but  in  the 
five  years  of  earthly  labor  that  still  remained  to  him 
he  was  to  see  that  infant  grow  into  the  proportions 


50 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  a  colossus  of  apostolic  power  that  would  bestride 
the  continent  of  Europe  from  end  to  end. 

Dispersion  of  the  Brethren 

Upon  receiving  the  bulls  of  confirmation  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  did  not  immediately  take  his  departure  for  Tou¬ 
louse,  but  spent  that  Lent  in  Rome  preaching  in  sev¬ 
eral  churches,  and  before  the  Pope  and  the  Papal 
Court.  It  was  in  recognition  of  the  success  of  his 
work  in  the  Eternal  City  at  this  time  that  the  office 
of  Master  of  the  Sacred  Palace,  or  Pope’s  Theolo¬ 
gian,  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  was  created  and  be¬ 
stowed  upon  him.  The  incumbent  of  this 
position  exercises  a  special  supervision  over  all  the 
literature  published  at  Rome.  All  books  written  by 
Catholics  must  receive  his  approval  before  they  may 
be  printed.  He  is  also  a  consultor  in  the  Congrega¬ 
tions  of  the  Inquisition,  the  Index  and  Rites.  For 
seven  hundred  years  this  high,  and  most  responsible, 
position  has  been  filled  exclusively  by  Dominicans. 

St.  Dominic  left  Rome  after  Easter,  1217,  and  ar¬ 
rived  a  month  later  at  Languedoc.  For  the  second 
time  he  summoned  the  brethren  to  meet  him  at 
Prouille  on  the  Feast  of  the  Assumption  of  this 
same  year.  But  this  time  it  was  not  to  deliberate 
over  the  selection  of  a  rule,  as  they  had  done  on  a 
previous  occasion,  a  little  over  a  year  before.  The 
second  gathering  was  for  the  purpose  of  learning 
the  founder’s  heroic  intention  of  immediately  scat¬ 
tering  them  broadcast  over  the  face  of  Europe  in 
pursuit  of  their  apostolic  mission.  We  can  readily 
understand  the  consternation  of  the  little  band  of 
seventeen  when  they  heard  that  within  eight 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


51 


months  of  their  confirmation  as  an  Order  they  were 
to  be  dispersed  through  many  nations  to  garner  the 
first  fruits  of  their  glorious  apostolate.  Was  it  not 
hazardous  to  scatter  this  little  band  of  youthful 
missionaries,  as  yet  hardly  familiar  with  the  spirit 
of  their  Institute,  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  Europe?  Undoubtedly  it  was  not  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  the  dictates  of  human  prudence,  and 
some  of  his  most  steadfast  friends — Foulques  of 
Toulouse,  the  Archbishop  of  Narbonne,  Simon  de 
Montfort,  and  even  some  of  his  own  brethren — at¬ 
tempted  to  dissuade  him  from  carrying  out  his  pur¬ 
pose.  But  the  wisdom  of  St.  Dominic  was  not  the 
product  of  human  experience.  The  light  that  guided 
his  actions  was  born  of  grace.  Consequently,  he 
was  not  to  be  moved  from  his  purpose  by  the  coun¬ 
sels  of  men.  The  result  of  this  action,  which  at  the 
time  seemed  little  short  of  suicidal,  proved  how  sure 
the  founder  was  of  the  source  of  his  inspiration. 

On  the  day  of  this  convocation,  just  before  the  act 
of  dispersion  took  place,  St.  Dominic  again  mani¬ 
fested  that  spirit  of  Christian  democracy  which  was 
not  the  least  element  of  his  noble  character,  and 
which  was  so  effectively  infused  by  him  into  the 
genius  of  his  Institute.  He  realized  the  necessity 
of  an  assistant  superior  who  would  rule  in  his  ab¬ 
sence  or  in  the  event  of  his  death.  Instead  of  arbi¬ 
trarily  appointing  such  a  superior  from  among  those 
who  most  fully  shared  his  views,  as  he  might  have 
done,  he  ordered  an  election,  that  they  who  were  to 
be  ruled  might  select  their  ruler.  The  choice  fell 
upon  Matthew  of  France,  who  assumed  the  title  of 
Abbot.  This  designation  was  permanently  discon¬ 
tinued  at  the  death  of  its  sole  bearer. 


52 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


With  a  parting  exhortation  to  be  faithful  to  their 
glorious  mission,  St.  Dominic  dismissed  his  brethren 
without  a  single  misgiving.  One  group  of  four 
directed  their  steps  towards  Spain.  Another,  among 
whom  was  Manes,  St.  Dominic’s  own  brother,  left 
for  Paris  under  the  leadership  of  Matthew  of 
France.  Two  remained  at  St.  Romain’s  at  Toulouse, 
and  two  others  at  Prouille.  Dominic,  with  a  single 
companion,  directed  his  course  towards  Rome. 

Miracle  at  St.  Sixtus 

In  order  to  facilitate  the  work  of  his  spiritual 
sons,  now  widely  scattered,  the  founder  on  his 
arrival  at  Rome  sought  further  concessions  in  their 
behalf  from  Pope  Honorius.  The  Sovereign  Pontiff, 
equally  solicitous  for  the  success  of  the  infant  Or¬ 
der,  generously  acceded  to  his  request.  Accord¬ 
ingly,  on  February  11,  1218,  he  despatched  a  bull  to 
all  archbishops,  bishops,  abbots  and  priors  bespeak¬ 
ing  their  assistance  “on  behalf  of  the  Order  of 
Friars  Preachers,  begging  them  to  assist  them  in 
their  needs,”  and  to  help  in  every  way  “the  most 
useful  ministry  to  which  they  were  consecrated.” 
He  himself  granted  them  the  church  of  St.  Sixtus, 
m  Rome,  for  their  permanent  headquarters. 

At  this  convent  of  St.  Sixtus  took  place  one  of 
those  prodigies— and  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  of 
them  all  that  proclaimed  the  great  sanctity  of  the 
patriarch  and  unmistakably  attested  the  favor  in 
which  he  stood  before  God.  As  yet  generally  un¬ 
known  to  the  people  of  Rome,  the  members  of  the 
new  Order  did  not  always  receive  the  support  nec¬ 
essary  for  their  maintenance.  As  they  practiced  a 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


53 


rigorous  poverty,  subsisting  on  the  fruits  of  their 
mendicancy,  they  oftentimes  went  hungry.  On  a 
certain  occasion  when  the  hour  for  dinner  had  ar¬ 
rived  the  procurator  announced  that  there  was 
nothing  for  the  community  to  eat.  Undismayed,  St. 
Dominic  ordered  the  brethren,  who  numbered  forty, 
to  repair  to  the  refectory.  Grace  was  chanted  as 
usual  and  they  took  their  accustomed  seats,  while 
the  saint  immediately  lost  himself  in  prayer.  Sud¬ 
denly  there  appeared  in  the  refectory  two  young 
men  of  extraordinary  beauty,  laden  with  loaves  of 
bread.  Whence  they  came  no  one  knew.  Beginning 
with  the  youngest  members  of  the  community,  they 
began  to  distribute  the  bread,  which  was  contained 
in  white  cloths  slung  from  their  necks.  When  the 
last  loaf  had  been  placed  before  St.  Dominic  they 
disappeared  even  as  they  had  come.  Thus  did 
Divine  Providence  watch  over  the  brethren  and  pro¬ 
vide  for  them  in  their  hour  of  need.  From  that  time 
a  custom  has  prevailed  in  the  Order  which  has  long 
since  been  incorporated  in  the  Constitutions — that 
of  serving  first  the  youngest  at  table  and  the  prior 
last.  This  custom,  while  it  never  threatens  the 
superior  with  the  deprivation  of  his  meal,  often 
leaves  him  with  little  opportunity  for  selection. 

The  Order  and  the  Universities 

St.  Dominic  had  planned  that  his  sons  should  be 
learned  preachers  “of  the  Word,”  and  therefore  that 
the  profound  study  of  science  should  be  one  of  the 
first  considerations  in  their  training  for  the  future 
apostolate.  In  conformity  with  this  design,  one  of 
his  first  official  acts  was  to  establish  them  in  the 


54 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


vicinity  of  the  great  universities  of  Europe,  where 
they  might  enjoy  the  advantages  of  the  most  lib¬ 
eral  education.  It  was  for  this  purpose  that  he  des¬ 
patched  Matthew  to  Paris,  where  the  latter  in  1217 
succeeded  in  making  a  foundation  near  the  famous 
university  of  that  city.  So  strongly  did  he  and  his 
companions  intrench  themselves  in  the  good  will  of 
the  university  professors  by  reason  of  the  sanctity 
of  their  lives,  their  earnestness  of  purpose  and  their 
capacity  for  study,  that  in  the  following  year  a 
member  of  the  faculty,  Jean  de  Barastre,  professor 
of  theology,  bestowed  on  them  the  house  of  Saint 
Jacques,  of  which  they  took  possession  August, 
1219.  Soon  after  this  another  foundation  was  made 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  University  of  Bologna. 

So  quickly  did  the  community  grow  at  St.  Sixtus, 
in  Rome,  that  in  a  short  time  it  was  entirely  inade¬ 
quate  for  the  needs  of  the  brethren,  whereupon 
Honorius — who  seemed  to  delight  in  bestowing 
favors  upon  the  sons  of  St.  Dominic — in  1219  con¬ 
veyed  to  them  the  Basilica  of  Santa  Sabina  and  one- 
half  of  his  own  family  palace  adjoining  the  church 
on  the  Aventine  Hill.  In  the  short  space  of  two 
years  all  these  and  many  other  convents  in  Spain 
and  Italy  had  been  established.  Surely  the  seed  that 
had  been  so  daringly  scattered  at  Prouille  had  taken 
root  and  brought  forth  fruit  increased  an  hundred¬ 
fold  !  Thus  was  triumphantly  vindicated  the  holv 
imprudence  of  St.  Dominic  in  the  dispersion  of  his 
little  community. 

Journey  to  Spain 

We  can  readily  believe  that  more  than  once  since 
lus  Order  had  been  firmly  established,  the  saint  had 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


55 


cast  a  longing  glance  in  the  direction  of  Spain,  and 
yearned  for  the  opportunity  of  implanting  in  the 
soil  of  his  native  land  a  branch  of  that  religious  tree 
which  in  so  short  a  space  of  time  had  matured,  blos¬ 
somed  and  borne  abundant  fruit  in  the  other  coun¬ 
tries  of  Europe.  At  last  this  opportunity  presented 
itself.  Having  appointed  Reginald  of  Orleans  vicar 
during  his  absence,  he  set  out  in  the  autumn  of  1218, 
accompanied  by  several  of  the  brethren,  to  cross  the 
Pyrenees.  In  1219  the  first  fruit  of  the  journey  was 
gathered  in  the  foundation  of  a  convent  of  the  Or¬ 
der  at  Segovia.  In  Spain,  also,  the  founder  adhered 
to  his  former  policy  of  identifying  his  brethren  with 
the  universities  of  Europe.  Accordingly,  he  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  establishing  them  near  the  University  of 
Palencia,  his  own  Alma  Mater.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
imagine  the  joy  of  the  faculty  in  receiving  into  its 
halls  of  study  the  spiritual  children  of  one  whom 
they  themselves  had  trained  for  the  great  work  of 
moral  reform  in  which  he  was  now  engaged.  At  the 
request  of  the  Bishop  of  Barcelona  a  convent  was 
also  established  in  that  city. 

Returning  from  Spain  in  the  spring  of  1219,  he 
directed  his  steps  towards  France  and  spent  Easter 
with  the  brethren  at  Toulouse.  The  following  June 
found  him  in  Paris,  where  he  rejoiced  to  learn  that 
the  community  had  in  the  short  period  of  its  exist¬ 
ence  increased  to  thirty  members.  At  Paris,  by  his 
learned  and  pious  conferences,  and  especially  by  the 
edification  of  his  personal  life,  he  helped  to  perfect 
the  religious  formation  of  the  community  and  then 
sent  them  forth  to  make  new  foundations.  In  this 
mission  they  were  eminently  successful,  for  the 


56 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


establishment  of  new  convents  quickly  followed  in 
Limoges,  Rheims,  Metz,  Poitiers  and  Orleans. 

Foundations  in  Italy  and  Poland 

In  July,  1219,  the  saint  arrived  in  Bologna  and, 
as  at  Paris,  immediately  took  up  the  work  of  in¬ 
structing  his  brethren  in  the  principles  of  the  relig¬ 
ious  life.  This  done,  he  dismissed  them  as  on  two 
previous  occasions  that  they  might  extend  their 
missionary  labors  throughout  Italy.  At  Milan, 
Bergamo,  Asti,  Verona,  Florence,  Brescia  and  Pia¬ 
cenza  new  houses  of  the  Order  sprang  up  to  per¬ 
petuate  the  blessings  the  missionaries  had  brought 
them.  So  pleased  was  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  with  the 
rapid  spread  of  the  Order  that  he  addressed  compli¬ 
mentary  letters  to  all  who  had  assisted  in  the  work 
of  its  propagation. 

To  understand  adequately  the  tireless  zeal  of  St. 
Dominic  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  all  these  jour¬ 
neys  between  France  and  Italy,  from  Rome  to  the 
western  coast  of  Spain,  and  back  again  across  the 
Pyrenees  to  France  and  Italy,  were  invariably  made 
on  foot.  On  these  pilgrimages  he  never  lost  an  op¬ 
portunity  to  preach  the  Word  of  God.  By  the  way^ 
side,  at  crossroads,  in  hamlets  and  villages,  as  well 
as  in  the  great  cathedrals  of  Europe,  he  proclaimed 
with  the  same  inspired  eloquence  the  eternal  truths 
of  religion.  When  the  opportunity  to  preach  did 
not  present  itself,  he  retired  within  himself  and  in 
meditation  fervently  communed  with  God. 

While  St.  Dominic  was  thus  engaged  in  spreading 
his  Order  throughout  Western  Europe,  there  came 
to  him  quite  unexpectedly  the  opportunity  of  widen- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


57 


in g  in  a  notable  degree  its  field  of  missionary  effort. 
In  1220  he  met  at  Rome  Ivan  Odrowantz,  Arch¬ 
bishop  of  Gnesen.  The  archbishop  was  accompanied 
by  his  two  nephews,  Hyacinth  and  Ceslaus,  canons 
of  Cracow,  and  by  three  laymen — Herman  the  Teu¬ 
tonic,  Henry  of  Moravia  and  Stanislaus  of  Cracow. 
All  these  attendants  of  the  archbishop  entered  the 
Order  of  Friars  Preachers  and  were  soon  professed. 
Consequently,  when  the  zealous  prelate  begged  St. 
Dominic  to  send  him  some  of  his  religious  to  labor 
among  the  pagans  and  schismatics,  idolatrous  Turks 
and  heathen  Finns,  the  saint  was  able  to  comply 
with  the  request  by  sending  back  to  Poland  with 
the  archbishop  the  members  of  his  own  suite  whom 
he  had  but  shortly  before  received  into  the  Or¬ 
der.  They  arrived  in  Poland  towards  the  middle 
of  1220  and  immediately  established  themselves  at 
Friesach.  Not  long  after  this  the  civil  and  religious 
authorities  of  Cracow  provided  them  with  a  church 
and  sufficient  money  for  the  erection  of  a  large  con¬ 
vent.  This  foundation  subsequently  became  the 
headquarters  for  all  the  brethren  laboring  among 
the  Slavs.  Other  foundations  were  made  at  Prague, 
Sandomir  and  Plockow.  Nor  were  Denmark  and 
Russia  closed  to  the  missionary  activities  of  Dom¬ 
inic’s  zealous  preachers.  Judging  by  the  number  of 
convents  established  in  so  short  a  time  by  the  orig¬ 
inal  little  band  of  Dominicans  sent  to  Cracow,  we 
can  readily  understand  how  great  was  the  success 
of  these  apostolic  men  and  how  enthusiastically 
their  ministrations  were  received  by  the  people. 
“Before  his  death,”  says  Lacordaire,  “Hyacinth 
set  up  the  Dominican  tents  in  Kief  itself  under  the 


58 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


very  eyes  of  Greek  schismatics  and  amid  the  noise 
of  the  Tartar  invasions.” 

The  First  General  Chapter 

The  first  four  years  of  the  Order’s  existence  had 
taught  St.  Dominic  the  necessity  of  still  further  in¬ 
creasing  the  efficiency  of  its  apostolate  and  of 
strengthening  its  government  by  embodying  in  its 
Constitutions  the  fruit  of  the  practical  experience  of 
the  brethren  in  the  field.  Consequently,  on  the  Feast 
of  Pentecost,  1220,  the  first  general  chapter,  which 
had  been  announced  some  months  before,  was 
convened  at  Bologna  under  the  direction  of  the 
founder. 

In  the  convocation  of  this  chapter  the  founder 
again  gave  expression  to  the  principle  of  popular 
representation  in  the  affairs  of  the  Order  which  he 
desired  to  be  characteristic  of  its  government.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  the  saint  had  full  power 
from  the  Holy  See  to  enact  whatever  laws 
he  might  deem  necessary  for  the  successful 
prosecution  of  his  mission.  This  power  he 
had  received  when  Honorius  III  made  him  Mas¬ 
ter  General  of  the  Order,  shortly  before  the 
opening  of  the  chapter.  This  prerogative,  how¬ 
ever,  he  would  not  exercise,  preferring  that  the 
legislation  of  the  Institute  should  represent  the 
opinions  of  the  majority  of  the  brethren.  Indeed, 
at  the  very  first  session  of  the  chapter  he  startled 
the  assembled  brethren  by  resigning  into  their 
hands  the  office  of  Master  General.  Needless  to  say, 
the  resignation  was  not  accepted.  He  decreed,  how¬ 
ever,  and  he  immediately  acted  on  his  own  ordi- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


59 


nance,  that  the  Master  General  should  possess  no 
authority  during  the  progress  of  a  General  Chapter; 
and  that  during  this  time  the  Order  should  be  gov¬ 
erned  by  four  definitors  elected  by  the  chapter.  So 
by  his  own  act  the  humble  founder  reduced  himself 
to  the  level  of  a  simple  Friar  Preacher  in  attendance 
at  the  chapter.  This  was  but  one  of  the  many  acts 
by  which  St.  Dominic  showed  forth  his  breadth  of 
mind,  disinterestedness  of  purpose  and  humility  of 
soul.  It  is  this  strength  of  character,  breadth  of 
vision  and  chivalry  of  spirit  that  have  marked  him 
for  all  time  as  one  of  the  most  imposing  figures  of 
the  Middle  Ages. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  none  of  the  en¬ 
actments  of  this  chapter  are  still  extant.  One 
thing,  however,  is  certain — they  renounced  the  first 
revenues  they  had  enjoyed  in  the  struggling  days  of 
the  Order,  and  resolved  in  the  future  to  throw  them¬ 
selves  entirely  upon  Divine  Providence  for  their 
maintenance  in  the  work  of  the  apostolate.  It  was 
furthermore  decided  that  they  should  annually  hold 
a  general  chapter  to  meet  the  needs  that  each  year 
might  bring  forth. 

Preaching  in  Lombardy  and  the  Third  Order 

Immediately  on  the  close  of  the  chapter,  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  set  about  the  execution  of  a  commission  he  had 
received  from  Honorius  III — the  conversion  of  the 
Lombard  heretics.  The  Sovereign  Pontiff  had  ad¬ 
dressed  letters  to  the  religious  superiors  of  San  Vit¬ 
torio,  Sillia,  Mansu,  Floria,  Vallombrosa  and  Aquila, 
instructing  them  individually  to  place  several  mem¬ 
bers  of  their  respective  communities  at  the  disposal 


60 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  St.  Dominic  for  the  purpose  of  preaching  in  cer¬ 
tain  of  the  Italian  provinces.  But  because  of  rea¬ 
sons  which  history  does  not  record,  this  elaborate 
plan  of  cooperation  was  not  supported  by  the  relig¬ 
ious  who  had  been  invited  by  the  Holy  Father  to 
participate  in  it.  This,  however,  did  not  prevent 
the  saint,  weakened  as  he  was  by  illness,  from 
throwing  himself  whole-heartedly,  with  a  number 
of  the  brethren,  into  the  work  of  converting  the 
heretics  of  Lombardy.  History  records  that  more 
than  one  hundred  thousand  of  the  heretics  were 
converted  through  the  miracles  and  preaching  of 
the  saint.  But,  as  the  event  soon  proved,  in  this 
heroic  effort  he  literally  spent  himself  for  the 
greater  honor  and  glory  of  God’s  house. 

According  to  the  testimony  of  Lacordaire  and 
other  writers  of  the  Order,  it  was  during  this 
preaching  of  the  Divine  Word  in  Lombardy  that  the 
saint  organized  the  Third  Order,  or  The  Militia  of 
Jesus  Christ,  as  it  was  then  called.  This  remarkable 
organization  was  made  up  of  men  pledged  to  the 
protection  of  the  rights  and  property  of  the  Church. 
It  was  at  first  a  distinctly  military  body;  but  after¬ 
wards,  under  the  title  of  The  Order  of  Penance  of  St. 
Dominic,  its  character  was  changed  to  enable  men 
and  women  still  living  in  the  world  to  acquire  some¬ 
thing  ol  the  spirit  of  the  religious  life.  It  assumed 
a  still  greater  influence  and  importance  when  it  es¬ 
tablished  branches  for  its  women  members  who  de¬ 
sired  to  retire  from  the  world  and  practice  the  re¬ 
ligious  life  in  all  its  fulness.  These  religious  of  the 
1  hird  Order,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  constitute  one 
of  the  most  important  and  fruitful  branches  of  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


61 


entire  Dominican  family.  It  cannot  be  more  fit¬ 
tingly  described  than  in  the  following  beautiful 
words  of  Father  Faber:  “There  is  not  a  nook  of  the 
mystical  paradise  of  our  Heavenly  Spouse  where  the 
flowers  grow  thicker  or  smell  more  fragrantly  than 
this  order  of  multitudinous  childlike  saints.  No¬ 
where  in  the  Church  does  the  Incarnate  Word  show 
His  delight  at  being  with  the  children  of  men  in 
more  touching  simplicity,  with  more  unearthly 
sweetness  or  more  spouse-like  familiarity.” 

After  his  spiritual  crusade  in  Lombardy,  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  returned  to  Rome  in  December,  1220.  His  ar¬ 
rival  at  the  Pontifical  Court  was  marked  by  new 
favors  at  the  hands  of  Honorius  III.  In  the  early 
part  of  the  following  year  three  consecutive  bulls 
were  issued,  bearing  the  respective  dates  of  January 
18,  February  4  and  March  29,  establishing  the  Or¬ 
der  in  all  its  rights  and  privileges  and  commending 
it  to  the  prelates  of  the  entire  Church. 

The  Second  General  Chapter 

Meanwhile  the  saint  prepared  for  the  opening  of 
the  next  general  chapter,  which  like  its  predecessor 
was  to  be  convened  at  Bologna.  Its  opening  session 
was  held  May  30,  1221.  At  this  chapter  St.  Dominic 
decided  that  the  time  was  now  opportune  for  intro¬ 
ducing  his  Order,  which  now  numbered  over  five 
hundred  members,  into  Hungary  and  Great  Britain. 
It  was  in  the  former  country  that  he  himself  had 
hoped  to  labor  among  the  Cuman  Tartars  in  the 
early  days  of  his  priesthood.  Now  that  he  knew  his 
days  on  earth  were  rapidly  drawing  to  a  close,  he 
saw  that  this  splendid  ambition  of  his  generous 


62 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


youth  would  have  to  be  realized  through  the  instru¬ 
mentality  of  his  devoted  brethren.  The  young  apos¬ 
tles  to  whom  this  glorious  task  was  assigned  met 
with  signal  success,  and  before  long  had  a  flourish¬ 
ing  convent  at  Alba  Royal.  This  convent  soon  be¬ 
came  the  center  of  a  large  band  of  missionaries  and 
served  the  same  purpose  for  southeast  Europe  as 
did  Cracow  in  the  northeast.  Within  a  year  after  its 
foundation  this  convent  was  able  to  send  mission¬ 
aries  into  Transylvania,  Serbia  and  Wallachia. 

Simultaneously  with  the  foundation  of  the  Hun¬ 
garian  missions,  St.  Dominic  despatched  twelve  of 
his  brethren  to  England.  At  the  suggestion  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  they  located  at  Oxford 
where,  in  connection  with  the  university,  they 
founded  the  King  Edward  School. 

“These  two  missions  in  England  and  Hungary,” 
as  Lacordaire  says,  “had  given  Dominic  possession 
of  Europe.  His  work  was  now  done,  and  perhaps 
not  unknown  to  him,  the  angel  of  death,  bearing  the 
final  summons  for  him,  was  already  on  the  wing.” 

Another  important  enactment  of  the  second  chap¬ 
ter  of  Bologna  was  the  division  of  the  Order  into 
eight  provinces,  each  ruled  by  a  provincial.  These 
were  the  provinces  of  Spain,  Provence,  France, 
Lombardy,  Rome,  Germany,  Hungary  and  England. 
I  he  Order  was  now  thoroughly  organized  and  sol¬ 
idly  united.  Each  of  its  province-units  was  pos¬ 
sessed  of  a  complete  local  government  and  all  were 
under  a  central  government,  or  hierarchy.  It  con¬ 
tained  all  the  machinery  necessary  to  perpetuate  its 
existence  and  at  the  same  time  to  guarantee  the 

utmost  efficiency  in  the  discharge  of  its  exalted 
mission. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


63 


From  Venice,  whither  he  had  gone  after  the  sec¬ 
ond  chapter,  St.  Dominic  returned  in  the  middle 
of  July,  1221,  to  Bologna  on  his  last  earthly  journey. 
He  had  already  fallen  a  victim  to  what  was  to  prove 
a  fatal  illness  when  he  arrived  at  his  convent  in  that 
city.  He  knew  that  within  a  month  his  earthly 
career  was  to  be  terminated,  and  so  spent  every  re¬ 
maining  moment  in  giving  his  last  counsels  to  the 
brethren  and  in  preparing  for  the  final  reckoning. 
After  three  weeks  of  illness,  during  which  he  edified 
all  by  his  heroic  patience,  his  fervor  and  profound 
spirit  of  resignation,  he  breathed  forth  his  soul  into 
the  hands  of  his  Creator  August  4,  1221.  In  the  full 
stature  of  heroic  sanctity,  in  the  hour  of  supreme 
triumph,  he  passed  out  of  life  into  eternity,  to  the 
possession  of  his  everlasting  reward.  He  was  can¬ 
onized  in  1234  by  Gregory  IX,  who  said  of  him  that 
he  had  no  more  doubt  of  his  saintliness  than  he  had 
of  that  of  Peter  and  Paul. 

St.  Dominic’s  Character 

St.  Dominic  was  cast  in  heroic  mould.  His  was 
not  the  gentle  spirit  of  St.  Francis  nor  the  genial 
spirit  of  St.  Philip  Neri.  He  was  the  uncompromis¬ 
ing  champion  of  truth  and  duty  at  a  time  when 
their  enemies  were  numerous,  powerful  and  active ; 
and  though  his  heart  was  brimming  over  with 
Christlike  charity  for  his  fellow  men,  as  many  inci¬ 
dents  in  his  life  attest,  yet  he  would  suffer  nothing 
to  come  between  him  and  the  glory  of  God  and  the 
honor  of  His  holy  Church.  He  permitted  nothing  to 
interfere  with  the  stern  sense  of  duty  which  guided 
every  action  of  his  life.  If  he  castigated  the  falla- 


64 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


cies  and  abominations  of  the  heretics,  it  was  be¬ 
cause  he  loved  truth  and  the  glory  of  his  Father’s 
house.  But  he  never  failed  to  distinguish  between 
sin  and  the  sinner.  He  presented  an  insurmount¬ 
able  barrier  to  the  progress  of  heresy  and  victori¬ 
ously  fought  its  champions  to  almost  the  last  hour 
of  his  life.  Consequently,  for  hundreds  of  years  he 
has  been  a  shining  mark  for  the  calumnies  of  her¬ 
esy-lovers.  Indeed,  it  has  required  the  long  per¬ 
spective  of  seven  hundred  years  to  reveal  him  in  his 
true  stature  and  place  him  in  his  proper  light.  He 
was  born  in  a  great  age,  amidst  elemental  move¬ 
ments  in  whose  direction  he  played  a  leading 
part.  Preeminently  the  ideal  Knight  of  Christ, 
he  won  his  spurs  in  many  a  victorious  conflict  with 
the  powers  of  darkness.  The  knightly  qualities 
of  chivalry,  valor  and  gentleness  were  blended 
in  his  character  with  a  marvelous  harmony.  A  lion 
when  he  confronted  the  enemies  of  the  Church,  he 
was  gentleness  itself  with  repentant  sinners.  The 
fair  one  for  whom  his  lance  was  always  poised  was 
the  Lady  Truth.  In  him  the  love  of  eternal  truth 
was  a  divine  passion  consecrated  to  the  salvation 
of  souls.  His  was  not  the  method  of  battering  down 
the  bulwarks  of  heresy  by  the  sheer  force  of  eccle¬ 
siastical  authority.  He  sought  and  attained  his 
spiritual  conquests  by  the  manifestation  of  truth 
and  oy  the  influence  of  divine  grace,  obtained 
through  prayer  and  mortification.  He  kindled  in 
the  souls  of  the  heretics  the  fire  of  his  own  charity, 
and  then  led  them  back  willing  captives  to  the  pale 
of  Holy  Church.  Among  the  strayed  sheep  of 
Christ  he  did  not  bear  himself  arrogantly,  as  one 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


65 


conscious  of  self-righteousness,  but  even  as  the 
lowliest  among  them.  He  was  ever  ready  to  stoop 
to  conquer  a  soul  for  Christ. 

When  the  salvation  of  a  soul  was  at  stake  he 
would  dispute  as  readily  and  courteously  with  a 
field  laborer  as  with  the  accredited  champions  of 
heresy.  His  soul  was  like  a  furnace — aflame  with 
the  fire  of  divine  love.  He  was  himself  the  most 
luminous  example  of  all  his  preachings.  Outstrip¬ 
ping  all  others  in  his  austerities  and  labors,  he  was 
at  the  same  time  the  most  tolerant  of  the  weakness 
of  his  associates.  There  never  was  an  apostle  of 
the  Faith  less  self-centered  than  he.  At  a  moment’s 
notice  he  was  ready  to  divest  himself  of  office, 
power  and  influence  and  become  even  as  the  lowliest 
among  his  brethren.  His  very  life  was  constantly 
at  the  service  of  his  apostolate.  Like  St.  Ignatius 
of  Antioch,  he  actually  yearned  for  martyrdom. 

When  the  exigencies  of  the  apostolate  did  not 
require  for  the  moment  the  exercise  of  his  bound¬ 
less  zeal,  he  solaced  his  spirit  by  meditation  upon 
the  Gospel  of  St.  Matthew  and  the  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  which  he  always  carried  slung  at  his  belt.  In 
this  manner  he  constantly  stored  the  arsenal  of  his 
mind  with  the  arms  of  the  spirit  in  preparation  for 
the  next  conflict,  and  reenergized  his  soul  by  inti¬ 
mate  contact  with  God.  Thus  he  passed  with  the 
utmost  facility  from  action  to  contemplation,  and 
from  prayer  to  battle  with  the  enemies  of  Christ. 
Broad  of  mind  and  of  far-reaching  vision,  he  did  not 
shackle  his  Order  with  the  customs  of  the  age  that 
watched  over  its  cradle.  Instead,  he  breathed  into 
it  the  spirit  of  all  humanity  and  of  all  future  ages. 


66 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


He  imparted  to  it  an  elasticity  which  would  enable 
it  like  an  agile  athlete,  to  adapt  itself  to  every  at¬ 
tack  of  the  enemy  and  meet  it  with  the  weapons 
best  suited  to  victory.  Impelled  himself,  through¬ 
out  his  lifelong  service,  by  the  single  incentive  of 
love,  he  would  not  hold  over  his  followers  the  whip¬ 
lash  of  punishment  and  so  make  them  the  craven 
slaves  of  fear.  Like  his  own  service,  theirs  must  be 
the  fruitage  of  divine  love.  For  the  love  of  God 
alone  he  would  have  them  faithful  to  their  Rule  and 
Constitutions.  Consequently,  he  would  not  attach 
the  penalty  of  sin  to  the  violation  of  either.  Surely 
St.  Dominic  was  the  ideal  Knight  of  the  Church — 
valorous,  chivalrous,  magnanimous.  We  cannot 
more  fittingly  close  this  sketch  than  by  quoting 
Dante’s  beautiful  appreciation  of  the  founder  of 
the  Friars  Preachers : 

“There  where  the  gentle  breeze  whispers  among 
the  young  flowers  that  blossom  over  the  fields  of 
Europe,  not  far  from  that  shore  where  break  the 
waves  behind  which  the  big  sun  sinks  at  eventide, 
is  the  fortunate  Calaroga;  and  there  was  born  the 
loyal  lover  of  the  Christian  Faith,  the  holy  athlete, 
gentle  to  his  friends,  and  terrible  only  to  the  ene¬ 
mies  of  truth.  They  called  him  Dominic.  He  was 
the  ambassador  and  the  friend  of  Christ;  and  his 
first  love  was  for  the  first  counsel  that  Jesus  gave. 
His  nurse  found  him  often  lying  on  the  ground,  as 
though  he  had  said,  ‘It  was  for  this  that  I  came/ 
It  was  because  of  his  love  for  the  Divine  Truth,  and 
not  for  the  world,  that  he  became  a  great  doctor  in 
a  short  time ;  and  he  came  before  the  throne  of 
Peter,  not  to  seek  dispensations  or  tithes,  or  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


67 


best  benefices,  or  the  patrimony  of  the  poor,  but 
only  for  freedom  to  combat  against  the  errors  of 
the  world  by  the  Word  of  God.  Then,  armed  with 
his  doctrine  and  his  mighty  will,  he  went  forth  to 
his  apostolic  ministry  even  as  some  mountain  tor¬ 
rent  precipitates  itself  from  a  rocky  height.  And 
the  impetuosity  of  that  great  flood,  throwing  itself 
on  the  heresies  that  stemmed  its  way,  flowed  on  far 
and  wide,  and  broke  into  many  a  stream  that 
■watered  the  garden  of  the  Church.”  Such  was  St. 
Dominic,  founder  and  first  Master  General  of  the 
Order  of  Preachers. 


PART  II 

GENIUS  OF  THE  ORDER 


GENIUS  OF  THE  ORDER 


Character  of  the  Times 

The  last  half  of  the  twelfth  and  the  first  half  of 
the  thirteenth  century  constituted  in  Europe  a 
period  of  general  unrest.  Titanic  forces  were 
struggling  for  the  mastery.  Great  principles,  preg¬ 
nant  with  human  interest,  were  seeking  expression 
and  recognition.  The  human  mind  was  in  travail, 
and  ideas  were  born  which  were  to  mark  a  new  and 
glorious  epoch  in  the  history  of  human  thought  and 
civilization.  A  bitter  struggle  between  the  Papacy 
and  the  House  of  Hohenstaufen,  which  was  to  con¬ 
tinue  for  a  century,  had  already  begun  when  St. 
Dominic  was  born.  The  very  year  of  his  birth  had 
witnessed  the  murder  of  St.  Thomas  aBecket.  In¬ 
nocent  III  was  gradually  reestablishing  papal 
supremacy.  The  early  years  of  the  thirteenth  cen¬ 
tury  had  seen  the  English  barons  wrest  Magna 
Charta  from  King  John.  On  the  border-lands  of 
Christianity  the  fifth  crusade  was  waging  the  battle 
of  truth  and  virtue. 

From  an  intellectual  standpoint  the  age  was  even 
more  momentous.  Europe  was  rapidly  emerging 
from  the  twilight  of  knowledge  that  had  character¬ 
ized  the  tenth  century.  Two  spirits  seemed  to  con¬ 
tend  for  the  masterv  of  the  intellectual  world ;  the 
old  spirit,  which  began  with  the  invasions  and  still 
smacked  of  barbarism,  a  spirit  which  contented  it¬ 
self  with  the  barest  rudiments  of  learning — the 
4 


72 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


spirit  of  feudalism ;  and  the  new  spirit,  conscious  of 
the  dignity  and  power  of  knowledge,  conscious  of 
principles,  laws  and  forces  in  the  realms  of  physics 
and  metaphysics,  as  yet  unknown  to  the  world  at 
large ;  conscious  of  the  need  of  new  methods  for 
the  attainment  of  larger  results — a  spirit  altogether 
inquisitive  and  keen  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge. 
It  was  the  spirit  of  a  new  civilization.  The  head  and 
front  of  the  new  movement  was  the  Church.  Not 
only  did  she  found  and  endow  schools,  colleges  and 
universities,  but  she  loaded  the  student  and  scholar 
with  privileges,  emoluments  and  honors.  Whenever 
town  was  in  conflict  with  gown,  which  was  often 
enough,  the  Church  always  manifested,  within  the 
bounds  of  justice,  a  tender,  parental  indulgence  for 
the  wearer  of  the  gown. 

While  the  battle  still  hung  in  the  balance,  the  cru¬ 
sades,  introducing  a  new  method  and  color  of 
thought  from  the  East,  and  the  general  diffusion  of 
the  teaching  of  Aristotle,  injected  a  new  element 
into  the  struggle,  and  one  that  was  hostile  to  the 
spirit  of  feudalism.  The  new  spirit  triumphed ; 
schools  multiplied,  scholars  abounded,  universities 
sprang  up  and  numbered  their  students  by  the  tens 
of  thousands.  The  whole  age  was  marked  by  rapid 
and  radical  changes,  great  ideas  and  mighty  move¬ 
ments,  many  of  which  have  endured  with  undimin¬ 
ished  influence  to  the  present  day.  It  was  alto¬ 
gether  a  forceful,  impetuous  and  chivalrous  age, 
possessed  of  a  giant’s  strength  and  a  child’s  discre¬ 
tion.  Indeed,  the  thirteenth  century’s  tireless  quest 
of  truth  has  often  been  likened  to  the  persistent  in¬ 
quisitiveness  of  a  precocious  child. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


73 


Danger  of  this  Movement 

But  the  intellectual  revival  was  not  without  its 
disquieting  element.  Human  reason,  fostered  and 
developed  under  the  guidance  of  the  Church  in  the 
middle  years  of  the  twelfth  century,  dazzled  by  the 
consciousness  of  its  own  power,  began  to  take  on 
an  overweening  arrogance  towards  faith  and  au¬ 
thority.  From  this  time  on  it  asserted  its  absolute 
and  undivided  supremacy  in  the  realm  of  knowl¬ 
edge,  human  and  divine.  It  undertook  to  measure 
all  truth  by  the  capacity  of  its  own  understanding. 
Faith  was  impugned,  dogma  challenged,  and  even 
the  mystery  of  the  Trinity  was  held  to  be  not  be¬ 
yond  the  reach  of  scholastic  analysis.  It  placed  its 
own  judgments  above  God  Himself,  and  demanded 
that  they  be  accepted  as  the  infallible  criteria  of 
truth.  St.  Bernard  thus  describes  how  generally 
this  spirit  had  permeated  the  times:  “Along  the 
streets  and  in  the  squares  people  dispute  about  the 
Catholic  Faith,  about  the  child-bearing  of  the  Vir¬ 
gin,  about  the  Sacrament  of  the  altar,  and  about  the 
incomparable  mystery  of  the  Trinity.”  Of  course, 
this  license  in  human  thought  could  have  but  one 
effect,  and  that  a  disastrous  one,  on  the  souls  of  men 
and  the  cause  of  truth  alike. 

The  Struggle  Against  Rationalism 

The  Church  met  this  new  situation  with  intel¬ 
lectual  forces  of  no  mean  caliber.  William  of  Cham- 
peaux  and  St.  Bernard  attacked  the  rationalists  with 
all  the  resources  of  their  great  intellects.  If  any 


74 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


criticism  of  their  work  be  permissible,  it  is  that  their 
method  was  in  some  degree  insufficiently  construct¬ 
ive.  With  fervid  eloquence  and  burning  zeal  they 
denounced  the  impiety  and  unbelief  of  the  rational¬ 
ists,  and  clearly  pointed  out  the  fatal  tendencies  of 
the  dialectical  system  in  the  hands  of  proud  and 
irreverent  men.  But  they  did  not  seek  to  purge 
that  system  of  its  abuses  and  employ  it  as  a  weapon 
of  defense.  This  was  to  be  the  work  of  another 
century.  The  immediate  consequence  was,  how¬ 
ever,  that  the  three  thousand  logic-mad  students,, 
if  that  expression  may  be  permitted,  who  followed 
Abelard  in  his  peripatetic  course,  sneeringly  turned 
from  the  champions  of  the  Faith  as  the  Athenians 
turned  from  St.  Paul,  saying:  “We  will  hear  thee 
again  concerning  this  matter.” 

A  policy  of  repression  was  next  adopted,  and  in 
1209  the  Bishop  of  Paris  convoked  a  council  to  con¬ 
demn  the  heresies  of  Amalric  of  Bena,  who  taught 
not  only  the  incarnation  of  Christ,  but  also  of  the 
Father  and  the  Holy  Ghost.  Though  he  had  been 
dead  two  years,  his  desiccated  bones  were  disinter¬ 
red  and  deposited  in  unhallowed  ground.  Even 
harsher  methods  were  applied  to  some  of  his  dis¬ 
ciples.  This  council  also  forbade  the  reading  of  the 
physics  of  Aristotle.  Six  years  later  Robert  de 
Courcon,  a  Papal  Legate,  condemned  the  metaphys¬ 
ical  works  of  Aristotle.  Perhaps  it  would  be  more 
in  accord  with  the  truth  of  history  to  say  that  the 
council  and  the  delegate  condemned  the  Arabian 
translations  and  commentaries  of  the  philosophical 
works  of  Aristotle. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


75 


Yet,  drastic  as  these  measures  were,  they  failed 
of  their  purpose,  and  the  spirit  of  rationalism  swept 
on.  In  the  thirteenth  century  it  attained  the  height 
of  its  power.  This  century  deified  Aristotle  and  re¬ 
garded  him  as  one  who  had  said  the  last  word  on 
all  subjects,  and  whose  conclusions  were  the  infal¬ 
lible  criteria  of  truth.  In  this  century  men  began 
to  speak  of  the  Philosopher  much  as  St.  Augustine 
says  the  masters  of  Carthage  spoke  of  the  Aristo¬ 
telian  categories  in  his  day — “with  cheeks  bursting 
with  pride,  as  of  something  altogether  divine.” 
Avicenna,  indeed,  had  said  that  Aristotle  was  the 
only  man  God  had  permitted  to  attain  the  highest 
summit  of  perfection.  It  was  clear,  therefore,  that 
a  crisis  was  imminent  in  the  struggle  between 
Western  belief  and  Eastern  unbelief,  and  the  out¬ 
come  was  of  supreme  concern  to  the  cause  of 
Christianity.  The  age  certainly  had  need  of  some 
tutelary  genius  whose  dominant  spirit  would  guide 
its  splendid  energies  to  high  aims  and  worthy  ends. 

This  was  the  condition  of  the  intellectual  world 
when  St.  Dominic  stood  pleading  with  Innocent  III 
for  permission  to  found  a  new  religious  order. 

St.  Dominic’s  Grasp  of  the  Situation 

As  the  patriarch  contemplated  the  age  in  which 
he  lived,  he  discerned  in  it  three  fatal  defects,  to 
which  could  be  traced  all  its  evils  :  First,  the  notable 
absence  of  the  contemplative  spirit  among  men  of 
the  active  life ;  secondly,  the  lack  of  reverent  yet 
scientific  scholarship ;  thirdly,  a  want  of  authori¬ 
tative  and  effective  preaching.  It  was  to  supply 


76 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


these  wants  of  his  times  that  St.  Dominic  established 
the  Order  of  Friars  Preachers.  Though  the  founder 
was  a  leader  among  men  and  an  ardent  progres¬ 
sionist  among  thinkers,  he  was  not  a  frivolous  in¬ 
novator  or  a  wanton  iconoclast.  His  habit  of 
thought  was  of  a  strictly  constructive  character. 
He  was  a  thinker  whose  work  was  to  mark  a  dis¬ 
tinct  epoch  in  the  intellectual  world,  and  to  exert  a 
remarkable  influence  on  the  development  of  scien¬ 
tific  thought.  But  this  was  not  to  be  accomplished 
by  the  levelling  of  all  existing  institutions  and  the 
utter  condemnation  of  all  accepted  methods.  His 
were  not  the  methods  of  the  hysterical  and  sen¬ 
sational  demagogue.  Novelty  for  novelty’s  sake 
did  not  appeal  to  him.  He  was  a  builder  who 
could  avail  himself  of  “old  things  and  new.” 
He,  therefore,  adopted  the  contemplative  spirit  of 
monasticism,  and  not  only  united  it  to  the  active  life, 
but  made  it  the  very  basis  of  the  apostolate.  He 
knew  full  well  that  reverence  is  born  of  contempla¬ 
tion  ;  that  contemplation  also  begets  knowledge, 
knowledge  love,  and  love  zeal  for  souls — the  indis¬ 
pensable  virtue  of  a  successful  ministry. 

Contemplative  Element 

Since  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  Order  of  Friars 
I  reachers  to  labor  in  the  world  for  the  salvation  of 
souls  through  the  ministry  of  the  Divine  Word,  it 
was  necessary  that  every  opportunity  for  self-sanc¬ 
tification  be  afforded  the  prospective  Dominican. 
In  no  other  way  could  he  hope  to  vitalize  his  utter¬ 
ances  with  the  spirit  of  sincerity  and  illustrate  them 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


77 


by  his  own  example.  It  was  equally  necessary  that 
he  have  ample  time  for  meditation — time  to  pon¬ 
der  over  eternal  truths,  unfold  their  divine  signifi¬ 
cance,  assimilate  their  substance  and  thus  prepare 
himself  to  proclaim  a  true  and  substantial  message 
of  comfort  and  hope  to  the  hungering  souls  of  men. 
As  his  life’s  work  would  be,  in  the  terse  phrase  of 
St.  Thomas,  “to  convey  to  others  the  fruit  of  his 
own  contemplation,”  it  was  necessary  that  he 
should  have  the  spirit  of  a  contemplative  no  less 
than  that  of  an  apostle.  With  these  ends  in  view 
St.  Dominic  chose  his  rule  and  formulated  his  first 
ordinances,  and  thus  determined  the  spirit  and  trend 
of  the  Order  for  all  future  time.  It  is  not  a  little 
to  the  credit  of  the  Friars  Preachers  that  in  all  the 
subsequent  legislation  of  seven  hundred  years  they 
have  faithfully  endeavored  to  interpret  the  mind  of 
their  blessed  founder  and  perpetuate  his  spirit.  In 
these  fundamental  principles  of  organization 
weighty  stress  was  laid  on  the  contemplative  ele¬ 
ment  of  the  Order;  for,  while  it  was  subordinated 
to  the  apostolate,  it  was  regarded  as  an  essential 
means  to  the  attainment  of  that  end.  Spiritual 
formation  through  contemplation  and  mortification 
was  the  training  best  fitted  to  fill  the  soul  of  the 
prospective  preacher  with  fervor  and  zeal.  It  were 
vain  to  expect  him  to  inflame  the  souls  of  others 
with  the  fire  of  God’s  love  if  he  had  not  first  kindled 
that  divine  passion  in  his  own  soul.  Consequently, 
the  twin  spirits  of  contemplation  and  apostolic  ac¬ 
tivity  were  indissolubly  united  in  the  Dominican 
ideal.  The  children  of  St.  Dominic  were  to  be 
neither  monks  nor  secular  priests,  but  a  happy  and 


78 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


effective  blending  of  both,  plus  the  apostolic  spirit 
which  was  their  special  and  priceless  inheritance 
from  their  founder.  In  the  words  of  Etienne  de 
Salagnac  the  Dominican  was  to  be  “a  canon  by  pro¬ 
fession,  a  monk  in  the  austerity  of  his  life  and  an 
apostle  by  the  office  of  preaching.” 

The  saint  had  prayerfully  and  studiously  planned 
the  scheme  which  was  to  make  for  the  personal 
sanctification  of  his  followers,  and  to  guarantee 
their  zeal  and  efficiency  in  the  world-wide  vineyard 
of  the  Lord.  It  was  to  this  end  that  he  appropriated 
the  substance  of  the  monastic  life,  in  so  far  as  it 
would  not  interfere  with  the  future  activity  of  the 
Order.  He  had  conceived  a  bold  and  original  plan 
for  a  new  age,  new  conditions  and  new  interests ; 
but  he  must  temper  to  the  work  the  tools  to  be  em¬ 
ployed  in  its  development.  For  this  purpose  the 
monastic  spirit,  stripped  of  many  of  its  fettering 
forms,  was  as  serviceable  as  it  had  ever  been.  This 
spirit  he  did  not  appropriate  directly  from  the  old 
monastic  institutes,  but  from  the  Canons  Regular, 
who  some  time  before  had  combined  its  essentials 
with  the  activity  of  a  local  ministry. 

The  Vows 

Ihe  three  vows  of  religion — poverty,  chastity  and 
obedience — he  adopted  in  all  their  pristine  severity. 
During  the  first  four  years  of  the  Order’s  existence, 
while  it  was  trying  to  find  itself,  as  it  were,  he  per¬ 
mitted  the  Institute,  as  a  whole,  to  possess  property 
and  revenues  to  the  extent  necessary  for  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  the  brethren;  but  never  for  a  moment 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


79 


would  he  suffer  personal  possessions  on  the  part  of 
its  individual  members.  Once  the  infant  Order  had 
taken  its  first  venturesome  steps,  it  heroically  re¬ 
nounced  even  corporate  possessions.  In  the  very 
first  chapter  of  the  Order,  that  of  Bologna  in  1220, 
at  the  suggestion  of  St.  Dominic,  the  Fathers  not 
only  reaffirmed  their  personal  obligation  of  detach¬ 
ment  from  all  earthly  possessions,  but,  furthermore, 
by  renouncing  all  the  revenues  they  had  enjoyed  up 
to  that  time,  they  pledged  themselves  to  a  life  of 
austerest  poverty.  It  was  at  this  chapter,  too,  that 
St.  Dominic  endeavored  to  persuade  his  brethren  to 
enact  a  law  turning  over  to  the  lay-brothers  the 
management  of  all  the  temporal  affairs  of  the  Or¬ 
der.  In  this  he  was  not  successful,  as  the  previous 
experience  of  many  of  the  Fathers  had  proved  the 
plan  impracticable.  The  founder  humbly  submitted 
to  their  views,  though  as  Master  General,  invested 
with  the  fullest  powers,  he  might  have  arbitrarily 
forced  compliance  with  his  wishes.  One  of  the 
early  chapters  determined  that  the  cells  of  the 
brethren  should  contain  no  other  ornaments  than  a 
statue  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  and  a  crucifix.  After 
this  manner  the  Institute  identified  itself  absolutely 
with  the  mendicant  orders  whose  sole  provider  was 
the  merciful  God  Himself.  This  was  no  new  mani¬ 
festation  of  the  spirit  of  poverty  on  the  part  of  St. 
Dominic.  We  recall  that  on  the  threshold  of  his 
apostolate  among  the  Albigenses  he  frankly 
ascribed  the  failure  of  the  papal  delegates,  in  their 
labors  among  the  heretics,  to  a  disregard  of  evan¬ 
gelical  poverty,  and  respectfully  suggested  that  for 
the  future  they  more  closely  follow  the  poverty  ex¬ 
emplified  in  the  life  of  the  Savior. 


80 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


From  all  of  this  it  is  apparent  that  the  founder  of 
the  Friars  Preachers  did  not  esteem  poverty  a  whit 
less  than  his  brother  saint,  the  Seraphic  Francis. 
But,  unlike  his  saintly  friend,  he  valued  it  principally 
as  an  effective  means  for  the  attainment  of  the 
ends  of  his  apostolate.  His  attitude  in  this  re¬ 
spect  was  based  upon  a  twofold  motive — principle 
and  expediency.  Poverty  was  an  essential  element 
of  the  religious  life.  Its  office  was  to  detach  the 
soul  from  all  material  interests,  with  their  attendant 
cares  and  distractions,  in  order  that  it  might  give 
itself  entirely  to  the  business  of  loving  and  serving 
God.  As  a  matter  of  expediency,  it  was  necessary 
that  his  followers  be  free  from  all  incumbrances  and 
the  preoccupations  which  the  possession  of  property 
entailes,  that  they  might  enjoy  a  greater  opportun¬ 
ity  for  study  and  possess  the  mobility  necessary  for 
the  activities  of  their  apostolate.  Poverty,  then,  St. 
Dominic  regarded  as  a  means  to  an  end ;  and  if  he 
expressed  himself  with  the  utmost  vehemence  in 
regard  to  those  who  should  be  unfaithful  to  its  ob¬ 
ligations,  it  was  only  because  he  foresaw  that  such 
infidelity  meant  the  failure  of  their  vocation  as 
Friars  Preachers.  But  he  was  farsighted  enough  to 
see  that  circumstances  might  arise  which  would 
render  a  rigorous  observance  of  poverty  a  serious 
impediment  to  the  work  of  saving  souls,  and  he  was 
broad-minded  enough  to  meet  this  difficulty,  as  well 
as  others  of  a  similar  nature,  by  placing  in  the  hands 
of  all  superiors  the  constitutional  power  of  dispen¬ 
sation. 

Chastity,  of  course,  was  adopted  according  to  the 
one  ideal  that  of  Jesus  Christ — which  has  ever  and 


THE.  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


81 


always  obtained  in  the  religious  institutes  of  the 
Catholic  Church. 

In  the  matter  of  obedience,  St.  Dominic  expected 
of  his  followers  a  whole-hearted,  prompt  and  cheer¬ 
ful  compliance  with  the  exactions  of  the  Rule  and 
Constitutions  and  with  the  expressed  wishes  of  their 
superiors.  Indeed,  their  vow  of  obedience  is  the 
only  one  mentioned  in  the  act  of  profession.  The 
reason  is  that,  according  to  the  intention  of  the 
Church,  it  includes  the  vows  of  poverty  and  chastity. 
In  the  ceremony  of  profession  the  Dominican's 
obedience  is  vowed  to  God,  to  the  Blessed  Virgin 
Mary  and  to  the  Master  General  of  the  Order  of 
Friars  Preachers.  This  includes  also,  of  course, 
obedience  to  his  immediate  superiors.  His  first 
vows,  pronounced  after  a  year  of  novitiate,  are  sim¬ 
ple  though  perpetual.  Three  years  after,  solemn 
vows  are  taken. 


Spirit  of  Dominican  Discipline 

Neither  the  Rule  nor  the  Constitutions  bind  under 
penalty  of  sin,  except  in  disobedience  involving 
formal  contempt.  The  founder  himself  declared  in 
the  chapter-house  at  Bologna,  for  the  comfort  of 
the  weaker  brethren,  that  the  Rule  did  not  bind  un¬ 
der  pain  of  sin,  and  that  if  he  could  think  otherwise 
he  would  go  to  every  cloister  and  hack  it  to  pieces. 
These  words  were  recorded  by  one  who  heard  them 
from  the  saint’s  own  lips.  The  chivalrous  Dominic 
could  not  imagine  a  religious  who  needed  to  be  * 
spurred  to  the  discharge  of  his  obligations  by  the 
craven  fear  of  punishment,  either  in  this  world  or 


82 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  next.  Divine  love  was  the  one  impelling  power 
that  actuated  him  in  all  his  relations  with  God,  and 
he  would  have  it  likewise  with  his  followers.  It 
was  this  spirit  embodied  in  the  Constitutions,  of  the 
Order  which  led  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna  to  exclaim : 
“The  Rule  of  our  Holy  Father  is  so  broad,  so  joyous 
in  character  and  of  so  sweet  savor !” 

Silence,  prayer,  fasting  and  abstinence  were 
strictly  enjoined  by  the  founder  as  pertaining  to  the 
very  essence  of  the  religious  life.  Fasting  was  en¬ 
joined  from  the  feast  of  the  Exaltation  of  the  Holy 
Cross — September  14 — to  the  following  Easter  Sun¬ 
day.  Abstinence  was  perpetual,  except  for  the  sick 
and  the  superannuated.* 

Silence,  always  characteristic  of  the  religious  life 
and  inseparable  companion  to  the  spirit  of  contem¬ 
plation,  was  also  required.  The  famous  portrait  of 
St.  Peter  Martyr,  painted  by  his  brother  Dominican, 
Fra  Angelico,  which  represents  the  saint  with  finger 
on  lips  bespeaking  silence,  is  beautifully  symbolic 
of  the  silence  that  haunts  the  cloisters  of  Dominican 
houses.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  Rule  that,  outside  of 
the  usual  recreation,  this  silence  be  broken  only  in 
class  and  chapter-room  and  in  the  choir,  when  the 
brethren  in  full,  sonorous  volume  and  in  spirited 
staccato  measure  chant  the  Divine  Office  and  alter- 

*  Climatic  conditions,  the  arduous  character  of  their 
work  and  other  circumstances  have  compelled  the  Domin¬ 
icans  in  various  places  to  modify  the  primitive  rigor  of 
their  law  of  fast  and  abstinence.  Yet  in  such  places,  in¬ 
cluding  our  own  country,  the  Rule  is  enforced  with  suffi¬ 
cient  strictness  to  satisfy  the  penance-loving  religious 
who  has  not  a  special  predilection  for  a  fish  or  vegeta¬ 
rian  diet. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  83 

nate  with  the  angel  choirs  in  singing  the  praises  of 

God. 

Dispensations 

All  these  adjuncts  of  the  religious  life  were  em¬ 
bodied  by  St.  Dominic  in  his  Constitutions  and 
strictly  enforced  by  him  as  effective  means  for  pro¬ 
moting  the  spiritual  perfection  of  his  children,  who 
were  to  be,  in  the  language  of  Honorius  III,  “the 
champions  of  the  Faith  and  true  lights  of  the 
world.”  But  it  must  be  again  insisted  on  that  in  the 
Dominican  Order  these  things  were  not  intended 
solely  for  the  sanctification  of  its  members,  as  in 
the  old  monastic  institutes,  but  as  means  also  to  a 
higher  end  —  the  apostolate.  With  a  clear  under¬ 
standing  of  the  mission  of  his  Order,  the  founder 
equipped  his  infant  Institute  with  rules  of  remark¬ 
able  detail  and  wondrous  efficiency.  With  that  far- 
reaching  range  of  vision  characteristic  of  all  great 
thinkers,  he  planned  not  merely  for  his  own  age  but 
for  all  time.  He  did  not  make  his  Order  the  crea¬ 
ture  of  his  own  times  merely,  nor  hobble  it  with  the 
conventions  of  the  age  that  witnessed  its  birth. 
Neither  did  he  limit  the  field  of  its  activity  to  the 
older  and  more  enlightened  nations  of  Europe.  He 
planned  an  organization  which  would  breathe  the 
spirit  of  catholicity,  embracing  all  ages,  races  and 
nations.  With  this  end  in  view,  he  imparted  to  the 
laws  with  which  he  equipped  it  an  extraordinary 
flexibility  and  elasticity  which  would  permit  their 
adjustment  to  all  times,  places  and  conditions.  With 
extraordinary  wisdom  and  liberality,  he  embodied  in 
the  Constitutions  themselves,  as  we  have  already 


84 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


seen,  the  power  of  dispensation  when  rigid  adher¬ 
ence  to  the  letter  of  the  law  would  fetter  the  exer¬ 
cise  of  apostolic  zeal. 

The  mind  of  St.  Dominic  on  this  point  was  ad¬ 
mirably  expressed  by  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of 
his  disciples,  Blessed  Humbert,  when  he  said: 
“When  some  point  has  been  insisted  upon  as  cal¬ 
culated  to  forward  a  certain  end,  it  cannot  be  per¬ 
mitted  to  prevent  the  attainment  of  that  end.  *  *  * 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  points  of  rule  in  the  Order 
must  not  be  observed  with  a  rigidity  which  is  calcu¬ 
lated  to  preclude  the  attainment  of  the  very  end  for 
which  the  Order  itself  was  founded.”  Each  superior 
is,  therefore,  empowered  prudently  to  dispense  his 
subjects  from  any  particular  requirement  of  the 
Rule  which  might  interfere  with  the  work  of  sav¬ 
ing  souls.  But  while  superiors  may,  for  good  and 
sufficient  reasons,  dispense  their  subjects,  they  can¬ 
not  under  any  circumstances  abolish  one  jot  or  tittle 
of  the  law.  The  wonderful  efficiency  of  the  Order, 
as  witnessed  by  its  varied  and  monumental  achieve¬ 
ments  throughout  the  world,  its  marvelous  vitality 
after  seven  hundred  years  of  service,  its  adaptability 
to  every  need  of  the  Church — all  these  are  in  a  very 
large  measure  due  to  the  wise  provision  of  dispen¬ 
sation  which  the  bold  and  original  mind  of  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  implanted  in  the  very  foundation  of  his  legis¬ 
lative  system. 

Rule  and  Constitutions 

The  machinery  by  which  the  abstract  rules  of  the 
religious  life  were  to  be  reduced  to  practice,  and  the 
ends  of  the  Order  attained,  were  the  Rule  and  Con- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


85 


stitutions.  The  first  formal  expression  of  law  to  be 
identified  with  the  Dominicans  was  the  Rule  of  St. 
Augustine  and  the  “Customs,”  largely  borrowed 
from  the  Premonstratensians.  Both  of  these  in¬ 
struments  had  been  selected  by  St.  Dominic  and  his 
little  band  at  Prouille,  the  former  just  before,  and 
the  latter  immediately  after  the  confirmation  of  the 
Order.  They  provided  for  the  ascetical  and  canoni¬ 
cal  requirements  of  the  community.  But  the  fun¬ 
damental  and  characteristic  legislation  of  the  Order 
was  enacted  at  the  first  Chapter  of  Bologna,  con¬ 
vened  by  St.  Dominic  himself  in  1220.  Around  this 
nucleus  was  woven  the  elaborate  fabric  of  law  of  all 
the  succeeding  general  chapters.  It  constitutes  a 
body  of  legislative  enactments  which  for  wisdom, 
efficiency  and  moderation  has  elicited  the  praise  and 
admiration  of  historians  and  statesmen  throughout 
the  course  of  seven  hundred  years.  It  was  this  legis¬ 
lation  which  gave  to  the  Order  its  permanent  form 
and  government.  Twenty-one  years  later  the  legis¬ 
lation  of  the  Chapter  of  Bologna  was  rearranged  by 
the  famous  Dominican  canonist,  Raymond  of  Pen- 
nafort,  without,  however,  substantially  changing 
the  text  of  the  original  draft.  This  text  of  St.  Ray¬ 
mond  was  given  the  weight  of  law  by  the  general 
chapters  of  1239,  1240  and  1241.  Augmented  by  the 
enactments  of  subsequent  general  chapters,  this 
text  constitutes  the  body  of  Dominican  legislation 
as  we  have  it  to-day. 

Organization 

The  Order  of  Preachers  is  divided  for  the  purpose 
of  government  into  provinces,  of  which  there  are  at 


86 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


present  thirty-three,  presided  over  by  provincials. 
Also  there  are  embryonic  provinces  called  “congre¬ 
gations.”  The  latter  are  districts  lacking  the  nec¬ 
essary  number  of  priories  to  qualify  as  provinces. 
They  are  governed  by  a  vicar-provincial  appointed 
by  the  Master  General.  The  working  unit  of  the 
province  is  the  priory,*  administered  by  a  prior. 
Other  foundations  of  minor  dignity  are  called 
“vicariates.”  These  foundations  are  tentative  and 
are  expected  ultimately  to  develop  into  priories.  At 
least  three  priories  are  necessary  for  the  foundation 
of  a  new  province.  The  superior  of  a  priory  is 
elected  to  office  for  a  term  of  three  years  by  the 
clerical  members  of  that  priory  who  have  been  sub¬ 
ject  to  vows  for  at  least  nine  years.  The  religious 
elected  must  have  been  professed  for  at  least  twelve 
years.  The  election,  however,  is  subject  to  the  ap¬ 
proval  of  the  provincial,  who  may  set  it  aside  and 
call  for  a  new  election.  Once  every  four  years 
a  provincial  chapter  is  held  for  the  election  of  a 
provincial.  Each  priory  is  represented  at  this  elec¬ 
tion  by  its  prior  and  a  delegate  ( socius ).  The  latter 
is  elected  by  those  who  are  qualified  to  vote  in  the 
election  of  a  prior.  While  the  prior  represents  his 
community  at  the  chapter  ex  officio ,  the  delegate  rep¬ 
resents  it  for  the  special  occasion  of  the  ejection. 
Ex-provincials,  Preachers-General  and  Masters  of 
Theology  also  have  a  voice  in  the  election  of  the 
provincial.  At  this  chapter  the  general  business  of 
the  province  is  transacted.  But  the  enactments  of 
the  chapter  do  not  become  operative  until  they  have 
been  approved  by  the  Master  General,  who  mav 
*  These  houses  are  also  called  “convents.” 


4> 


i 


St.  Thomas  Aquinas  Among  the  Doctors 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


87 


also  annul  the  election  and  thereby  necessitate  a 
reassembling  of  the  elective  college.  During  the 
progress  of  the  chapter,  the  administration  of  the 
province  rests  in  the  hands  of  the  prior  in  whose 
priory  the  chapter  is  held,  and  four  others,  called 
“definitors,”  elected  by  the  brethren  attending  the 
chapter.  From  the  close  of  the  chapter  until  the 
newly-elected  provincial  has  been  confirmed,  the 
province  is  administered  by  a  vicar  chosen  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  the  customs  of  the  several  provinces. 

Two  years  after  each  provincial  chapter,  an  “in¬ 
termediate  chapter,”  or  “congregation,”  as  it  is 
called,  attended  by  ex-provincials,  Masters  of  Theo¬ 
logy  and  priors,  is  held  under  the  presidency  of  the 
provincial  to  transact  the  affairs  of  the  province. 
Like  the  enactments  of  the  provincial  chapter,  those 
of  the  intermediate  congregation  are  also  subject 
to  the  revision  and  approval  of  the  Master  General. 

General  chapters  are  held  by  the  entire  Order 
every  three  years.  As  a  matter  of  convenience 
these  chapters  take  place  in  Europe.  The  elective 
chapter  at  which  the  Master  General  is  elected  is 
held  every  twelve  years.  In  this  chapter  both  the 
governing  and  the  governed  elements  are  repre¬ 
sented, but  the  representatives  of  the  latter  are  twice 
as  numerous  as  those  of  the  former.  The  provincials 
from  all  the  provinces,  with  two  other  xepiesenta- 
tives  (definitor  and  socius)  for  each  piovince,  are 
the  constituent  members  of  this  chapter.  All  these 
members  of  the  general  chapter,  except  the  provin¬ 
cials  who  attend  ex  officio,  are  elected  by  the  provin¬ 
cial  chapters  of  their  respective  provinces,  which 
immediately  precede  the  general  chapter.  During 


88 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  first  six  hundred  years  of  the  Order’s  existence 
the  Master  General  held  office  for  life.  In  1804  his 
term  was  reduced  to  six  years,  and  in  1862  extended 
to  twelve.  Three  years  after  the  election  of  the 
Master  General  another  general  chapter  is  held 
which  is  attended  by  one  delegate  (definitor)  from 
each  province  and  his  “associate.”  The  delegates  to 
this  chapter  represent  the  governed  element  of  the 
Order.  Three  years  after  this,  the  provincials  of  all 
the  provinces  representing  the  governing  element 
of  the  Order  are  again  convened  in  general  chapter. 
The  next  chapter,  like  the  second,  is  a  definitors’ 
chapter ;  while  in  the  next,  which  is  an  elective 
chapter,  both  provincials  and  definitors  participate. 
At  all  but  the  elective  chapter,  the  Master  General 
presides  over  the  deliberations  of  the  brethren. 

During  the  life  of  the  general  chapter  the  ad¬ 
ministration  of  the  Order  is  placed  in  the  hands  of 
the  provincial  in  whose  province  the  chapter  is  held, 
and  of  committees,  to  each  of  which  is  intrusted  the 
working  up  of  one  of  the  subjects  to  be  brought  be¬ 
fore  the  chapter.  This  arrangement,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  was  first  effected  by  St.  Dominic  at  the 
Chapter  of  Bologna,  in  1220.  Before  the  chapter 
adjourned  this  arrangement  was  embodied  in  the 
Constitutions  for  all  time. 

“Such,”  says  the  Frenchman  Delisle,  “was  the 
simple  mechanism  which  imparted  to  the  Order  of 
Friars  Preachers  a  powerful  and  regular  movement, 
and  secured  them  for  a  long  time  a  real  preponder¬ 
ance  in  Church  and  State.”  The  entire  government 
and  organization  of  the  Dominican  Order  repre¬ 
sents  an  harmonious  blending  of  monarchical  and 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


89 


democratic  elements  which  St.  Thomas  proclaims 
the  best  of  all  practical  forms  of  government.  The 
democratic  side  of  the  Order  is  best  illustrated  by 
its  representative  character  and  the  election  of  its 
officers.  Its  laws  are  enacted  by  representative 
bodies  in  provincial  and  general  chapters  to  which 
provincials  and  Masters  General  are  responsible  for 
their  acts.  The  elective  power  permeates  it  from 
top  to  bottom.  Every  cleric  of  the  Institute  who 
has  been  professed  nine  years  has  a  right  to  express 
his  choice  for  immediate  superior  of  the  convent  to 
which  he  is  assigned.  Indirectly  the  brethren  may, 
through  their  elected  representatives,  express  their 
choice  for  provincial  and  general  officers.  Directly  or 
indirectly, their  superiors  are  responsible  to  them  for 
their  acts.  It  is  their  right  to  express  to  the  chapter 
their  opinion  whether  their  prior  should  be  retained 
in  office  or  removed.  The  same  right  is  exercised 
by  the  priors  at  the  intermediate  congregation  in 
regard  to  the  removal  of  the  provincial.  From  this 
it  is  evident  that  the  principle  of  “the  recall,”  now 
so  strenuously  agitated  in  civil  politics  as  both  new 
and  progressive,  has  been  in  use  in  the  Dominican 
Order  for  centuries.  No  superior  is  irresponsible ; 
none  can  become  a  law  to  himself.  Priors  are  in 
some  measure  answerable  to  their  subjects ;  pro¬ 
vincials  and  generals  to  their  chapters.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  monarchical  element  is  seen  in  the  pow¬ 
ers  vested  in  the  superiors  of  the  Order.  In  few, 
if  any,  other  institutes  are  superiors  clothed  with 
such  power  as  the  rulers  among  the  briars  Preach¬ 
ers.  As  the  provincial  can  remove  from  office  for 
sufficient  reason  any  superior  in  his  province,  and 


90 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


locate  every  one  of  his  subjects  where  he  will  within 
the  confines  of  the  province,  in  like  manner  the 
Master  General  can  act  towards  the  superiors  and 
subjects  of  the  entire  Order,  while  he  himself  can 
be  removed  from  office  by  the  general  chapter. 
Thus,  the  principles  of  check,  counter-check  and 
balance  have  been  skillfully  employed  in  the  Domin¬ 
ican  scheme  of  legislation  to  prevent  an  inordinate 
and  dangerous  accumulation  of  arbitrary  power  in 
the  hands  of  any  individual,  or  group  of  individuals, 
but  without  at  the  same  time  giving  to  the  admin¬ 
istration  of  the  Order  the  character  of  mob  rule.  It 
is  worthy  of  note  that,  as  Father  Mandonnet  re¬ 
marks,  the  absolutist  governments  of  Europe 
showed  but  little  sympathy  for  the  democratic  Con¬ 
stitutions  of  the  Preachers.  In  this  effective  blend¬ 
ing  of  the  monarchical  and  democratic  forms  of 
government  the  legislation  of  the  Institute  but  re¬ 
flects  the  spirit  of  St.  Dominic.  Possessed  of  the 
most  autocratic  kind  of  power,  bestowed  on  him  as 
Master  General  by  Honorius  III,  he  possessed  also 
in  no  less  a  measure  the  spirit  of  true  democracy. 
Time  and  time  again  in  the  all-too-few  years  of  his 
government  he  emphatically  expressed  the  desire, 
and  translated  it  into  practice,  that  his  Order  should 
possess  a  representative  form  of  government. 
While  other  founders  of  religious  institutes  arbitra¬ 
rily  dictated  rules,  constitutions  and  methods,  and, 
with  the  best  of  intentions  undoubtedly,  jealously 
safeguarded  the  power  with  which  they  had  been 
invested,  it  was  Dominic’s  constant  effort  to  seek 
the  counsel  and  guidance  of  his  brethren  and  to 
share  with  them  his  authority  and  power.  Such  was 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


91 


his  purpose  when  he  consulted  them  in  the  selection 
of  a  rule  at  Prouille ;  and,  again,  when  he  assem¬ 
bled  the  brethren  at  Prouille  in  1217,  just  before  he 
dispersed  them  through  Europe,  in  order  that  they 
might  elect  a  vicar-general  to  rule  in  his  absence  or 
in  the  event  of  his  death.  It  was  in  pursuit  of  the 
same  object  that  he  convoked  two  general  chapters 
atBologna,  one  in  1220  and  the  other  in  1221 ;  that  he 
sought  to  resign  his  office  of  Master  General  into 
their  hands,  and,  failing  that,  renounced  all  author¬ 
ity  during  their  deliberations.  With  the  same  end 
in  view,  in  deference  to  the  opinion  of  the  brethren, 
he  abandoned  his  cherished  plan  of  placing  all  tem¬ 
porals  in  the  hands  of  lay-brothers.  In  St.  Dominic 
the  monarchical  element  was  represented  by  his  un¬ 
restricted  power,  and  his  spirit  of  democracy  by  the 
way  in  which  he  divested  himself  of  that  power. 

A  learned  German  historian  has  well  said:  “We 
do  not  deceive  ourselves  in  considering  the  organ¬ 
ization  of  the  Dominican  Order  the  most  perfect  of 
all  monastic  organizations  produced  by  the  Middle 
Ages.”  As  imitation  is  the  sincerest  form  of  flat¬ 
tery,  undoubtedly  the  greatest  compliment  paid  to 
its  efficiency  was  its  adoption  in  toto  by  the  Friars 
of  the  Sack,  and  the  influence  it  exercised  in  the 
organization  of  a  great  many  other  mediaeval  in¬ 
stitutes.  We  need  not  be  surprised,  in  the  light  of 
the  foregoing,  at  the  words  credited  to  the  Italian 
historian,  Cesare  Cantu:  “Wonderful  is  the  Domin¬ 
ican  legislation,  which  in  every  particular  seems  ad¬ 
mirable,  even  after  seven  hundred  years  :  or  at 
the  following  sentiment  attributed  to  Niccolo  Mac- 
chiavelli :  “With  these  laws  (of  the  Dominican  Or- 


92 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


der)  a  great  and  flourishing  republic  could  be  gov¬ 
erned.”  Truly,  St.  Dominic  was  a  constructive 
statesman,  and  justly  did  Newman  ascribe  to  him 
“an  imperial  spirit  of  government.” 

Study 

The  second  great  need  of  the  times,  as  viewed  by 
St.  Dominic,  was  a  reverent,  yet  scientific,  scholar¬ 
ship,  not  only  in  the  schools  but  in  the  pulpit  as 
well.  The  disciples  of  the  saint  were  to  be  profess¬ 
edly,  not  incidentally,  preachers  of  the  Divine  Word. 
Consequently,  they  must  be  thoroughly  trained  and 
perfectly  equipped,  not  only  to  stir  the  faithful  to 

greater  fervor,  but  to  enter  the  schools  and  combat 
the  rationalistic  tendencies  of  scholars  already 

steeped  in  oriental  error.  They  must  be  prepared 
to  face  the  heresiarchs  of  the  Albigenses  and  other 
sects,  and  by  controversial  preaching  as  well  as  by 
written  polemics  vindicate  the  truth  of  Christ  for 
the  honor  of  God  and  the  salvation  of  souls.  In 
order  that  we  may  fully  grasp  the  plan  of  the 
founder  it  is  necessary  briefly  to  review  the  meth¬ 
ods  of  theological  teaching  that  had  succeeded  one 
another  up  to  and  including  his  time. 

Theological  Systems 

The  method  of  theological  exposition  in  the  first 
six  centuries  of  the  Church’s  existence  was  that  in¬ 
troduced  by  the  Fathers.  It  was,  of  course,  based 
upon  the  Scriptures,  and  developed  by  patristic  com¬ 
mentaries  and  the  tradition  and  decisions  of  the 
Church. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


93 


With  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century  a  new 
method  made  its  appearance.  Already  the  teach¬ 
ings  of  the  Fathers  had  come  to  be  looked  upon  as 
authoritative  in  an  eminent  degree.  They  were, 
therefore,  made  the  basis  of  the  new  method  con¬ 
jointly  with  the  Scriptures,  tradition  and  the  deci¬ 
sions  of  the  Popes  and  Councils.  The  writings  of 
the  Fathers  were  mostly  made  use  of  through  the 
medium  of  compendia  and  extracts  from  their 
writings. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  yet 
another  method  had  come  into  general  use,  which 
was  to  be  known  as  the  scholastic  method.  It  is 
impossible  to  ascribe  with  any  degree  of  certainty 
the  beginning  of  scholasticism  to  any  particular  in¬ 
dividual  or  time.  Some  refuse  to  acknowledge  any 
other  than  Albert  the  Great  as  the  first  scholastic ; 
others  hark  back  to  the  person  and  times  of  Abel¬ 
ard  ;  others,  still,  affirm  that  its  rise  dates  from  the 
controversy  over  the  Eucharist,  participated  in  by 
Lanfranc,  on  one  side,  and  Berengarius  on  the 
other ;  while  others  still  looked  to  Scotus  Erigena 
and  the  ninth  century  for  its  origin.  One  thing, 
however,  is  certain — the  appearance  in  the  twelfth 
century  of  more  numerous  and  more  complete 
translations  of  the  Stagerite  gave  to  this  method  a 
new  and  powerful  impetus.  It  was,  in  substance,  an 
alliance  of  faith  and  reason  —  the  dialectic  system 
applied  to  the  elucidation  of  theology.  It  consisted 
in  developing,  expanding,  illustrating  and  clearing 
of  objections,  in  a  didactic  manner,  the  dogmas  of 
religion. 


94 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Need  of  a  New  Method 

Whatever  service  the  dialectic  method  conferred 
on  theology,  it  had  proved  a  dangerous  weapon  in 
the  hands  of  the  proud  and  headstrong.  Personified 
by  Erigena,  Berengarius  and  Abelard,  it  stood  for 
dominant  reason  and  irreverence.  Scotus  Erigena 
had  said  that  “authority  is  derived  from  reason.” 
Abelard  taught  that  “liberty  was  the  right  to  con¬ 
sult  reason,  and  to  listen  to  it  alone.”  In  the  per¬ 
sons  of  Averroes  and  Avicenna  it  championed  pan¬ 
theism  and  naturalism  in  many  of  the  universities 
of  Europe.  It  was  not  always  employed  in  the  serv¬ 
ice  of  truth,  but  often  for  mere  vain  display.  The 
great  need  of  the  times,  therefore,  in  the  judgment 
of  St.  Dominic,  was  an  order  of  men  capable  of  de¬ 
fending  the  supremacy  of  the  Faith  with  sacred 
and  profane  science — science  not  acquired  for  the 
vain  purpose  of  academic  display,  but  for  the  de¬ 
fense  of  truth  and  the  salvation  of  souls.  He  real¬ 
ized  the  urgent  need  of  a  body  of  men  capable  of 
refuting  the  brilliant  aberrations  of  future  Abelards, 
of  combating  the  Hebrew  and  Arabian  philosophers 
who  were  injecting  their  subtle  poisons  into  the 
thought  of  the  times,  of  purging  the  Philosopher 
himself  of  error  and  of  harmonizing  his  teachings 
with  the  Scriptures  and  patristic  writings. 

The  Church  then  possessed  no  such  institute  to 
meet  the  needs  of  the  times.  Before  St.  Dominic’s 
time  the  religious  Orders  were  holy  asylums  for 
the  promotion  of  personal  sanctity  by  labor,  fasting 
and  prayer.  The  work  of  St.  Anthony  and  St. 
Pachomius  was  hidden  in  the  wilderness.  Its  spirit 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  95 

of  solitude  was  unsuited  for  the  turbulent  times  of 
the  thirteenth  century. 

In  the  sixth  century  St.  Benedict  founded  the 
monastic  Institute  of  the  West.  But  its  spirit,  too, 
was  purely  contemplative,  and  not  of  an  active,  ag¬ 
gressive  apostolate  in  the  outer  world,  though  the 
necessities  of  the  times  more  than  once  forced  it 
to  enlarge  its  scope.  For  more  than  six  hundred 
years  monasticism  had  served  gloriously  the  needs 
of  the  Church,  and  in  its  schools  and  scriptoriums 
the  cause  of  education  and  civilization.  But  in  the 
twelfth  century  monasticism,  representing  the  syn¬ 
thetic  and  mystic  spirit  of  St.  Benedict,  had  begun 
to  lose  its  ascendency,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century  its  influence  upon  the  times  was 
wholly  negligible.  The  contentious  character  of 
that  century  was  not  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of 
“quies”  that  filled  the  cloistered  silence  of  the 
mountain  abbey.  Not  later  than  the  year  1118  the 
monks,  as  though  in  protest  against  the  irreverent 
spirit  of  the  schools,  closed  their  doors  against  all 
lay  students.  The  Fourth  Lateran  Council  had  en¬ 
deavored  to  meet  the  situation  by  issuing  a  decree 

i 

authorizing  the  appointment  of  a  Master  of  The¬ 
ology  for  each  of  the  cathedral  schools.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  had  not  proved  effectual. 

St.  Dominick  Plan 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  conceived  the  idea  of  founding  an  order  of  men 
versed  in  sacred  and  profane  science,  trained  in  dia¬ 
lectical  skill,  who,  though  formed  in  the  silence  of 


96 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


a  cloister,  could  enter  the  noisy  arena  of  the  univer¬ 
sity  and  successfully  measure  lances  with  the  arro¬ 
gant  knights  of  reason  in  defense  of  the  Faith.  His 
followers  were  to  be  students,  scholars  and  educa¬ 
tors,  not  by  chance,  personal  inclination  or  indul¬ 
gence,  but  by  design  and  the  requirements  of  their 
vocation.  Truth — universal  truth — its  acquisition 
and  diffusion,  was  the  intellectual  ideal  he  would 
realize  in  his  followers.  “Veritas”  was  the  motto 
emblazoned  on  the  escutcheon  of  the  Order.  Such 
was  the  chivalrous  design  of  St.  Dominic.  The  very 
conception  of  such  a  scheme  indicated  the  greatness 
of  his  mind  and  the  sweep  of  his  vision.  How 
effectively  he  planned  and  how  true  to  his  ideals 
were  his  associates,  may  be  seen  in  the  fact  that 
within  a  hundred  years  his  Institute  was  universally 
designated  “the  Order  of  Truth.” 

St.  Dominic  was  well  qualified  intellectually  to 
plan  so  great  an  undertaking.  He  was  a  man  whose 
native  gifts  of  intellect  were  of  the  highest  order. 
“Dominic,”  as  Cardinal  Newman  says,  “a  man  of 
forty-five,  a  graduate  in  theology,  a  priest  and  a 
canon,  brought  with  him  into  religion  the  maturity 
and  completeness  of  learning  which  he  had  acquired 
in  the  schools.”  He  was  a  profound  student  of  the 
history  of  the  Church,  knew  its  trials,  understood 
the  dangers  that  menaced  it,  and  was  thoroughly 
familiar  with  its  needs.  The  active  part  he  had 
taken  in  suppressing  the  Albigensian  heresy,  and 
his  extensive  travels  with  the  Bishop  of  Osma, 
added  to  his  academic  knowledge  a  vast  fund  of 
practical  experience  and  imparted  to  him  a  deep  in¬ 
sight  into  the  spirit  and  trend  of  his  times.  He  had 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


97 


taken  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  apostolate  of  the 
written  as  well  as  of  the  spoken  word.  Doctors  of 
wide  renown,  scholars  of  highest  repute,  sought  his 
advice  and  called  him  “Master.”  Honorius  III  rec¬ 
ognized  his  scholarly  attainments  when  he  created 
the  office  of  Pope’s  Theologian  and  appointed  him 
to  fill  it. 

Even  before  he  had  taken  the  first  step  towards 
realizing  his  splendid  dream,  and  while  it  was  still 
taking  form  in  his  brain,  St.  Dominic  determined 
that  his  followers  should  be  learned  preachers  of 
the  Divine  Word.  Scarcely  had  the  little  band  of 
seven  taken  possession  of  the  house  of  Peter  Cellani 
as  a  diocesan  community  than  he  led  them  to  the 
school  of  Alexander  Stavensby,  a  famous  scholar  of 
Toulouse.  The  significance  of  this  act  lies  in  the 
fact  that  they  were  all  priests,  and,  therefore,  ordi¬ 
narily  well  versed  in  theological  science.  By  this 
action  he  made  clear  his  intention  that  the  members 
of  his  Order  should  acquire  a  larger  knowledge  of 
sacred  science  than  that  possessed  by  the  average 
priest.  He  realized  that  only  an  unfailing  devotion 
to  study  could  make  a  “full”  preacher,  out  of  whose 
abundance  souls  would  be  nourished  with  the  eter¬ 
nal  truths  of  God. 

Indeed,  the  very  spirit  of  the  times  made  neces¬ 
sary  the  formation  of  such  preachers.  As  much  of 
the  preaching  was  to  be  directed  to  unbelievers — 
Albigenses  or  rationalists  —  and  must  needs  be, 
therefore,  of  a  polemical  nature,  it  was  imperative 
that  the  brethren  have  a  firm  and  comprehensive 
grasp  upon  the  principles  and  facts  of  ecclesiastical 
science.  This  was  especially  true  of  the  depart- 


98 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


ments  of  philosophy,  dogmatic  theology  and  Sacred 
Scripture— in  the  last  of  which  many  among  the 
heretics  were  remarkably  well  versed.  It  was  to  be 
the  work  of  the  Friars  Preachers,  as  Jordan  of  Sax¬ 
ony  expressed  it,  “to  defend  the  Faith  and  destroy 
heresy.”  Such,  too,  was  the  anticipation  Honorius 
III  expressed  in  the  bull  in  which  he  confirmed  the 
Order:  “Expecting  the  brethren  of  your  Order  to 
be  the  champions  of  the  Faith  and  the  true  lights  of 
the  world,  we  confirm  your  Order.”  That  this  great 
expectation  was  not  unfounded  is  demonstrated  by 
the  fact  that  fifty  years  after  the  Order’s  institution 
Clement  IV  could  proclaim  it  “the  guardian  of 
truth.” 

For  the  attainment  of  this  “magnificent  aim,”  as 
Cardinal  Newman  calls  it,  St.  Dominic  instituted  an 
Order  in  which  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  was  to  go 
hand  in  hand  with  the  quest  for  spiritual  perfection, 
and  both  were  to  be  ordained  to  the  salvation  of 
souls  through  the  ministry  of  the  Word.  It  was 
a  wholly  original  idea,  unsuggested  by  anything  in 
the  rules  or  constitutions  of  the  religious  institutes 
that  antedated  the  foundation  of  the  Friars  Preach¬ 
ers  ;  and  we  must  admit  that  it  was  as  bold  as  it  was 
original  when  we  consider  the  noisy,  arrogant  and 
heretical  character  of  so  many  of  the  scholars  of  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries.  It  is  to  his  own 
Order  that  Blessed  Humbert,  fifth  Master  General, 
assigns  the  honor  of  having  been  the  first  to  unite 
the  formal  and  systematic  prosecution  of  study  with 
the  conventional  exercises  of  the  religious  life. 
From  this  exposition  of  the  plan  of  St.  Dominic  it 
will  be  seen  that  the  great  lights  of  sanctity  and 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


99 


learning  who  with  unfailing  regularity  rose  in  each 
succeeding  generation  were  not  accidental  to  the 
Order,  hut  the  legitimate  fruit  of  its  founder’s  gen¬ 
ius  and  planning. 

Its  Execution 

As  the  architect  of  the  new  Institute,  Dominic 
not  only  drew  up  the  plan  and  general  design,  but 
carefully  worked  out  each  detail  and  specification. 
Clearly  he  saw  that  to  maintain  the  high  standard 
of  scholarship  he  had  proposed  for  his  spiritual  chil¬ 
dren  it  would  be  necessary  to  afford  them  the  best 
educational  advantages  obtainable.  It  is  not  sur¬ 
prising,  therefore,  that  among  the  very  first  official 
acts  of  St.  Dominic,  as  Master  General,  was  the 
drafting  of  rules  designed  to  promote  the  educa¬ 
tional  efficiency  of  the  Order.  Immediately  on  his 
return  from  Rome,  after  the  confirmation  of  the 
Order,  he  gathered  his  companions  about  him  at 
Toulouse  and  in  two  words  summed  up  for  them 
their  vocation  as  Friars  Preachers  —  to  study  and 
preach. 

With  this  fixed  purpose  in  mind  he  despatched 
several  of  the  brethren  to  the  university  cities  of 
Paris  and  Bologna,  and  subsequently  to  the  schools 
of  Padua  and  Palencia,  when  he  dispersed  his  little 
flock  in  1217.  It  was  the  same  consideration  that 
led  to  the  selection  of  Matthew  of  France,  a  learned 
man  “ready  to  meet  every  point  of  doctrine,”  to  be 
superior  of  the  little  community  that  settled  close 
to  the  gates  of  the  University  of  Paris ;  and  of  Reg¬ 
inald  of  Orleans,  professor  and  Doctor  of  Law  at 
the  same  school,  to  be  put  in  charge  of  the  convent 
of  the  University  at  Bologna. 


100 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


The  very  first  chapter  of  the  Order,  convened  by 
St.  Dominic  at  Bologna,  admonished  the  brethren 
to  attend  assiduously  to  books  and  studies.  It  was 
on  this  occasion,  too,  that  the  custom  originated  of 
having  the  general  chapters  choose  the  lectors  who 
were  to  direct  the  studies  in  each  convent — studies 
in  which  even  the  superior  was  obliged  to  partici¬ 
pate.  Other  observances  might  be  relaxed  for  rea¬ 
sonable  causes,  but  study,  never.  In  the  chapter  of 
1228,  superiors  were  empowered  to  dispense  with 
any  article  of  the  Rule  that  interfered  with  study. 
If  any  one  culpably  exempted  himself  from  the  daily 
class  in  theology,  it  was  ordained  by  the  chapter  of 
1305  that  on  that  day  he  should  practice  a  special 
abstinence  at  table  for  a  penance.  In  1336  a  pro¬ 
vincial  chapter  held  at  Toulouse  reluctantly  dis¬ 
pensed  from  attendance  at  these  daily  lectures  those 
who  had  spent  fifty  years  in  the  Order.  In  1250  a 
prior  in  Dacia  was  removed  from  office  and  pun¬ 
ished  because,  by  enlarging  the  study  halls,  which 
were  considered  ample  for  their  purpose,  he  had 
interrupted  the  studies  of  the  convent. 

The  obligation  of  study  was  to  be  deeply  im¬ 
pressed  upon  the  novice  from  the  moment  of  his 
entrance  into  the  Order.  “It  is  his  (the  novice-mas¬ 
ter’s)  duty,”  the  Constitutions  say,  “to  make  them 
(the  novices)  realize  that  they  have  to  apply  them¬ 
selves  seriously  to  study ;  that  they  are  under  ob¬ 
ligations  to  read,  and  reflect  day  and  night  upon 
what  they  have  read,  and  that  they  must  endeavor 
to  commit  to  memory  as  much  as  they  can.”  In 
“The  Book  for  the  Instruction  of  Novices,”  exam¬ 
ined  and  approved  by  the  general  chapter  of  1283, 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


101 


the  novice  is  informed  that  after  profession  his  life 
is  to  be  occupied  with  three  things — spiritual  exer¬ 
cises,  study  and  the  apostolate ;  and  at  considerable 
length  it  makes  clear  to  him  how  great  is  the  im¬ 
portance  of  science.  In  fact,  the  author  devotes  an 
entire  treatise  to  the  importance  the  novice  must 
attach  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  the  at¬ 
tention  which,  from  the  first  day  of  his  entrance  into 
the  Order,  he  must  give  to  it.  The  cell  of  the  Do¬ 
minican  religious  was  to  be  a  sanctuary  conse¬ 
crated  to  the  threefold  service  of  study,  writing  and 
prayer.  The  first  two  were  to  be  dedicated  to  the 
service  of  God  no  less  than  the  last. 

Everything  not  essential  to  the  spiritual  forma¬ 
tion  of  his  subjects  St.  Dominic  subordinated  to 
study.  While  prayer  was  to  be  practiced  assidu¬ 
ously,  the  spirit  of  austerity  kept  undiminished,  the 
choral  obligation  discharged  with  unfailing  fidelity, 
yet  it  was  the  spirit  of  study  which  was  to  permeate 
the  entire  life  of  the  Order.  The  Divine  Office  was 
to  be  chanted,  not  drawlingly  and  tediously,  as 
among  the  monastic  orders,  but  “spiritedly  and 
without  dragging.”  The  time  thus  saved  was,  of 
course,  to  be  devoted  to  study.  Among  the  decrees 
of  the  Order  in  the  saint’s  own  time,  we  find  the 
following:  “Let  the  brethren  be  more  occupied  in 
books  and  study  than  in  singing  responses  and  anti¬ 
phons.”  It  required  considerable  courage  to  make 
this  declaration  in  the  early  part  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  when  the  forms  of  monasticism  still  con¬ 
stituted  the  prevailing  type  of  the  religious  life.  It 
was  not,  however,  to  invest  the  Order  with  the 
glamour  and  fame  of  intellectual  achievement  in  the 


102 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


schools  that  this  insistance  was  placed  on  study,  but 
rather  to  promote  the  Dominican  apostles’  efficiency 
in  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord.  Blessed  Humbert  ex¬ 
pressed  this  clearly  when  he  said:  “Study  is  not 
the  chief  end  of  the  Order,  but  is  eminently  neces¬ 
sary  for  preaching  and  redeeming  souls.”  In  no 
other  way  could  they  hope  to  fulfil  the  injunction 
of  St.  Paul :  “Preach  the  Word ;  be  instant  in  sea¬ 
son  and  out  of  season;  reprove,  entreat,  rebuke  in 
all  patience  and  doctrine.”  While  in  the  last  analy¬ 
sis  they  must  depend  upon  divine  grace  for  the 
fruits  of  their  labors,  that  fact  did  not  in  the  least 
dispense  them  from  the  necessity  of  employing  sec¬ 
ondary  causes,  among  which  science  was  one  of  the 
most  effective. 

Obstacles  to  Study  Eliminated 

It  was  also  for  the  purpose  of  providing  his  fol¬ 
lowers  with  a  greater  opportunity  for  study  that  St. 
Dominic  eliminated  from  his  Rule  the  practice  of 
manual  labor.  From  the  very  beginning  of  monas- 
ticism  this  form  of  employment  had  been  one  of  its 
characteristic  institutions.  But  St.  Dominic’s  pur¬ 
pose  was  not  to  adopt  monasticism  in  its  entirety, 
but  only  such  parts  of  it  as  were  not  inconsistent 
with  an  active  apostolate  of  preaching.  As  the  per¬ 
formance  of  physical  labor  would  necessitate  the 
sacrifice  of  precious  time  which  could  be  more  prof¬ 
itably  spent  in  study,  he  blazed  a  new  path  in  the 
religious  life  by  eliminating  it  from  the  plan  of  his 
Institute.  Such  work  of  this  kind  as  was  necessary 
in  the  care  of  convents  he  assigned  to  lay-brothers. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


103 


One  of  the  saint’s  several  reasons  for  insisting,  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  on  rigorous  poverty  was 
that  the  spirit  of  study  might  not  suffer  because  of 
solicitude  for  material  possessions.  He  would  have 
the  Order,  even  as  a  corporate  entity,  deprived  of 
the  power  of  possessing  anything  of  value  either  in 
the  form  of  estates  or  fixed  revenues.  He  knew  full 
well  that  where  the  heart  is,  there  also  is  the  mind. 
Attachments  to  the  possessions  of  worldlings  have 
never  yet  fostered  the  spirit  of  study  in  laymen  or 
religious.  In  order,  therefore,  that  the  brethren, 
free  from  every  possible  distraction,  might  devote 
themselves  uninterruptedly  to  the  acquisition  of 
sacred  knowledge  he  even  proposed  that  the  care  of 
material  concerns  be  entrusted  entirely  to  lay- 
brothers.  But  in  this  he  humbly  submitted  to  the 
almost  unanimous  opposition  of  the  Chapter  of 
Bologna. 

Schools  of  the  Order 

When  the  founder  despatched  a  considerable  con¬ 
tingent  of  his  first  disciples  to  the  University  of 
Paris,  it  was  not  his  purpose  that  they  should  con¬ 
tent  themselves  with  only  such  instruction  as  was 
to  be  received  from  daily  attendance  at  the  lectures 
of  the  University.  From  the  very  beginning  of 
their  foundation  at  Paris  he  arranged  that  they 
should  follow  a  complete  course  of  study  in  their 
own  convent.  This  was  a  bold  innovation  which 
had  never  before  been  attempted  at  the  university, 
where  the  Masters  were  extremely  jealous  of  their 
professorial  prerogatives.  But  St.  Dominic  was  not 
much  concerned  with  such  matters  where  a  prin- 
5 


104 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


ciple  of  great  importance  was  at  stake.  The  con¬ 
vent  at  Paris,  and  those  subsequently  founded  at 
Toulouse  and  Oxford,  immediately  took  on  the 
character  of  real  colleges,  and  in  some  instances, 
even  of  universities  as  they  existed  in  those  days. 
This  was  the  beginning  of  the  system  of  grouping 
a  number  of  colleges  around  a  university,  each  with 
its  own  system  of  studies  supplemented  by  the  uni¬ 
versity  courses.  After  seven  hundred  years  of  trial 
this  system  is  still  in  vogue  at  the  great  universities 
of  Oxford,  Cambridge  and  Dublin.  It  was  undoubt¬ 
edly  original  with  St.  Dominic,  who  before  dismiss¬ 
ing  his  little  band  of  disciples  at  Prouille  in  1217  in¬ 
structed  them  as  to  how  they  should  derive  the 
greatest  advantage  from  their  studies  at  Paris.  We 
find  nothing  similar  to  it  before  the  foundation  of 
the  Convent  of  St.  James  by  the  Dominicans  in 
Paris  in  1217. 

Undoubtedly  there  had  been  so-called  colleges  at 
Paris  long  before  the  Friars  Preachers  arrived  on 
the  scene,  but  they  were  colleges  only  by  courtesy. 
In  fact,  they  were  but  hostels  where  the  students 
lived  while  they  followed  the  courses  at  the  univer¬ 
sity.  Such  an  institution  in  our  own  day  is  the 
American  College  at  Rome.  No  lectures  were  given 
in  them  and  their  occupants  were  entirely  dependent 
on  the  professors  at  the  university  for  their  instruc¬ 
tion.  It  remained  for  St.  Dominic  to  conceive  the 
idea  of  making  these  colleges  active  educational  ad¬ 
juncts  to  the  work  of  the  universities.  The  best 
possible  testimony  to  the  excellence  of  this  plan  was 
offered  by  the  number  of  religious  orders  that 
adopted  it  in  the  houses  they  had  founded  and  affili¬ 
ated  with  the  University  of  Paris.  These  houses 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


105 


were  graded  according  to  the  character  of  the 
studies  conducted  in  them.  Besides  the  ordinary 
convents,  in  which  the  course  of  studies  included 
the  Scriptures,  moral  and  dogmatic  theology  and 
ecclesiastical  history,  there  were  larger  convents 
with  higher  and  more  elaborate  curricula.  The 
schools  of  these  larger  convents,  like  that  of  Tou¬ 
louse,  were  called  Higher  Schools  (Studia  Solem- 
nia).  The  courses  in  these  institutions  lasted  three 
years.  They  afforded  a  kind  of  normal  training  for 
those  students  of  more  than  ordinary  ability  whom 
the  Order  intended  for  the  work  of  teaching. 
The  Higher  Schools  (Studia  Solemnia)  contained 
a  faculty  of  four:  lector,  sub-lector,  master  of  stu¬ 
dents  and  prior.  To  the  lector  and  sub-lector  it  be¬ 
longed  to  give  the  daily  lectures.  The  master  of 
students  wras  concerned  with  the  discipline  of  the 
student  body  and  sometimes  assisted  in  teaching. 
Also,  he  might  allot  the  students  private  cells  and 
permit  them  lights  for  the  purpose  of  study.  All, 
of  course,  were  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  prior, 
who,  nevertheless,  was  himself  obliged  to  attend  the 
daily  lectures.  A  yet  higher  grade  of  convents  was 
that  composed  of  General  Schools  (Studia  Genera- 
lia).  They  possessed  the  highest  and  most  elaborate 
of  all  the  courses.  The  first  of  these  was  estab¬ 
lished  in  conjunction  with  the  University  of 
Paris,  and  others  were  afterwards  established  at 
Montpellier,  Toulouse,  Cahors,  Bologna,  Naples, 
Florence,  Genoa,  Barcelona,  Salamanca,  Cologne 
and  Oxford.  These  courses  also  required  three 
years  for  their  completion.  They  were  followed  by 
students  who  had  finished  their  studies  in  the  Higher 
Schools  and  who,  as  a  rule,  were  the  most  richly 


106 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


gifted  of  the  entire  Order,  as  well  as  the  most 
liberally  endowed  with  the  opportunity  of  perfect¬ 
ing  their  talents.  Each  province  was  obliged  to 
maintain  at  least  three  students  at  the  University 
of  Paris. 

The  pedagogical  system  was  as  simple  as  it 
was  effective.  The  master  lectured  daily  on 
the  subject-matter  of  the  class.  The  following 
Friday  one  of  the  students  was  called  upon  to 
give  a  substantial  summary  of  all  the  lectures  of 
the  current  week.  Every  two  -weeks  the  students 
were  called  upon  to  take  part  in  “circles/ ”  formal 
disputations,  the  theme  of  which  was  selected  by 
the  master,  who  also  presided  at  these  academic  ex¬ 
ercises.  The  subjects  of  these  discussions  were 
taken  from  matter  under  consideration  in  the  class. 
This  was  the  simple  method  by  which  the  greatest 
light's  of  the  Order,  including  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin, 
were  formed,  and  which  made  it  possible  for  Cardi¬ 
nal  James  de  Vitry  to  say  that  the  Order  was  “a 
congregation  of  the  scholars  of  Christ.”  And  it  was 
this  simple  yet  highly  organized  system  of  instruc¬ 
tion  which  led  Larousse  to  say,  in  his  great  Uni¬ 
versal  Dictionary,  that  “Dominic  was  the  first  min¬ 
ister  of  public  instruction  in  modern  Europe.” 

New  Studies 

In  the  time  of  St.  Dominic  it  was  contrary  to  cus¬ 
tom  for  either  priests  or  religious  to  take  up  courses 
in  the  liberal  arts  and  natural  sciences.  The  former 
had  been  a  prolific  source  of  heresy  and  the  latter 
had  fallen  into  disrepute  through  the  quackery  of 
the  alchemists  and  other  pseudo-scientists.  But 


THE  ORDER  OP  PREACHERS 


107 


here,  also,  the  Friars  Preachers  introduced  a  de¬ 
parture  from  the  established  usage.  The  authori¬ 
ties  of  the  Order  first  conceded  to  individual  stu¬ 
dents  the  privilege  of  studying  the  liberal  arts. 
Then  followed  the  institution  of  the  School  of  Arts, 
comprising  a  three  years’  course,  for  the  exclusive 
use  of  religious.  In  1260  the  School  of  Natural 
Science  was  founded.  Instead  of  being  hotbeds  of 
heresy,  as  they  had  been  under  lay  management, 
these  schools,  under  the  direction  of  Dominicans, 
forged  some  of  the  most  powerful  weapons  of  Chris¬ 
tian  polemics,  which  in  the  hands  of  Albert  the 
Great,  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  and  other  brilliant  sons 
of  St.  Dominic  accomplished  wonders  in  the  extirpa¬ 
tion  of  heresy  and  the  vindication  of  truth,  natural 
and  divine.  This  course,  it  will  be  seen,  substan¬ 
tially  paralleled  the  curriculum  at  the  University  of 
Paris  and  imparted  to  the  General  Schools  of  the 
Order  the  character  of  small  universities. 

But  the  contemporaries  of  St.  Dominic,  and  those 
who  immediately  followed  him,  knew  too  well  his 
plans  and  drank  too  deeply  of  his  spirit  to  content 
themselves  with  merely  the  conventional  studies  of 
their  times.  Any  and  all  branches  of  knowledge 
that  could  be  made  available  for  the  salvation  of 
souls  were  to  be  utilized  for  the  greater  efficiency 
of  their  apostolate.  For  this  reason  in  1236,  just 
fifteen  years  after  the  death  of  St.  Dominic,  the 
chapter  of  that  year  ordered  that  the  religious  of 
each  convent  should  acquire  the  languages  of  the 
countries  adjacent  to  their  own.  Some  fourteen 
years  later  a  School  of  Arabic  was  established  at 
Tunis  with  a  view  to  preparing  missionaries  to  labor 


108 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


among  the  Arabs.  Within  the  next  thirty  years 
similar  schools  were  established  at  Barcelona,  Mur¬ 
cia  and  Valencia.  The  general  chapter  of  1310  au¬ 
thorized  the  foundation  of  schools  in  various  prov¬ 
inces  for  the  study  of  Hebrew,  Greek  and  Arabic. 
To  these  schools  each  province  was  obliged  to  send 
one  student.  In  the  fourteenth  century  the  teach¬ 
ing  of  philosophy,  which  had  been  rehabilitated  by 
Albert  the  Great  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  was  re¬ 
vived  in  various  convents  of  the  Order. 

This  extraordinary  academic  activity  on  the  part 
of  the  youthful  Order  led  Molinier,  the  Protestant 
historian,  to  say  of  the  Dominicans :  “They  were 
not  content  with  professing  in  their  convents  all  the 
divisions  of  science,  as  it  was  then  understood;  they 
added  an  entire  order  of  studies  which  no  other 
Christian  schools  of  the  time  seem  to  have  taught, 
and  in  which  they  had  no  other  rivals  than  the  rabbis 
of  Languedoc  and  Spain.”  And  this  is  literally  true, 
for  the  Plan  of  Studies  ( Ratio  Studiorum )  drawn 
up  by  Vincent  of  Beauvais,  one  of  the  most  learned 
men  the  Order  has  ever  produced,  covered  all  the 
knowledge  of  the  times,  whether  in  the  domain  of 
art,  history,  Scripture,  philosophy  or  theology. 
Cardinal  Newman  conceived  it  to  be  the  magnificent 
aim  of  the  children  of  St.  Dominic  “to  form  the 
whole  matter  of  human  knowledge  into  one-har¬ 
monious  system,  to  secure  the  alliance  between  re¬ 
ligion  and  philosophy,  and  to  train  men  to  the  use 
of  the  gifts  of  nature  in  the  sunlight  of  divine  grace 
and  revealed  truth.” 


THE.  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


109 


Character  of  Students 

How  thoroughly  equipped  the  Order  was  to  real¬ 
ize  this  ambitious  scheme  of  education  may  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  in  the  first  century  of  its 
existence  it  was  recruited  in  an  extraordinarily 
large  measure  from  the  students  and  professors  of 
the  universities.  St.  Dominic  himself  drew  heavily 
on  the  student  and  professorial  bodies  of  the  Law 
School  of  Padua,  whilst  Matthew  of  France  and 
Reginald  of  Orleans  levied  a  similar  tax  upon  the 
universities  of  Paris  and  Bologna.  These  scholars 
did  not  forswear  their  allegiance  to  science  when 
they  put  on  the  white  habit  of  St.  Dominic ;  rather 
did  they  consecrate  that  allegiance  to  the  cause  of 
religion,  that  they  might  extend  the  reign  of  Him 
who  is  called  “Lord  of  Knowledge.” 

Owing  to  the  Order’s  ability  to  select  and  sift  the 
multitude  of  candidates  that  applied  for  admission 
to  its  ranks,  it  maintained  a  uniformly  high  standard 
among  its  members.  This,  taken  in  conjunction 
with  the  supernatural  motive  which  constituted  the 
impulse  of  their  efforts,  and  the  rigorous  religious 
discipline  to  which  they  were  subject,  produced 
scholars  among  them  who  were  of  heroic  dimen¬ 
sions.  They  were  quite  different  from  the  heteroge¬ 
neous  mass  of  students  at  the  universities,  many  of 
whom,  as  in  our  own  day,  were  attracted  to  aca¬ 
demic  halls  by  the  glamour  and  excitement  of  un- 
versity  life,  and  were  possessed  of  no  devouring 
hunger  for  knowledge. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  therefore,  that  within 
eight  years  after  the  death  of  their  sainted  founder 
the  Friars  Preachers  had  been  allotted  one  of  the 


110 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


twelve  chairs  of  theology  at  the  University  of  Paris, 
and  a  second  shortly  after.  It  is  without  exaggera¬ 
tion,  then,  that  Dr.  O’Leary,  a  distinguished  Protes¬ 
tant  divine  of  England,  says  that  “although  Paris 
became  the  great  center  of  theological  study,  we 
may  perhaps  venture  to  say  that  the  Dominican  Or¬ 
der  itself  surpassed  even  Paris  in  the  completeness 
of  its  theological  training.”  So  it  is  not  without 
reason  that  Cardinal  Newman  in  characterizing  the 
three  great  patriarchs  of  the  Church,  while  assign¬ 
ing  to  St.  Benedict  for  his  distinguishing  badge  the 
Poetical,  to  St.  Ignatius  the  Practical  and  Useful, 
assigns  to  St.  Dominic  the  badge  of  Science.  How 
fittingly,  therefore,  the  Church  salutes  the  holy 
founder  of  the  Order  of  Preachers  with  the  titles  of 
“Light  of  the  Church,”  “Doctor  of  Truth!” 

PREACHING 
Deficiency  of  Preachers 

The  third  great  deficiency  of  the  times,  in  St. 
Dominic’s  estimation,  was  a  learned  and  zealous 
body  of  priests  unfettered  by  parish  duties  and  un¬ 
restricted  by  diocesan  boundaries,  who,  like  the 
Apostle,  should  go  forth  and  preach  the  Gospel  to 
the  entire  world.  Preaching,  generally  speaking, 
had  practically  ceased  before  the  advent  of  St.  Dom¬ 
inic.  Undoubtedly  this  was  in  a  measure  due  to  the 
turbulent  condition  of  the  times  and  to  the  many 
and  pressing  affairs  resulting  from  rapidly  chang¬ 
ing  conditions  which  absorbed  the  time  and  activi¬ 
ties  of  the  hierarchy,  to  whom  alone  the  duty  of 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  111 

preaching  belonged  by  right.  But  while  those  whose 
prerogative  and  responsibility  it  was  to  preach 
failed  in  their  duty,  others,  unfitted  and  unauthor¬ 
ized,  had  usurped  this  sacred  function  to  the  great 
detriment  of  the  Faith.  The  heresy  of  the  Waldenses 
had  but  recently  sprung  from  the  usurpation  of  the 
preaching  office  by  ignorant  laymen.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Albigensian  heresy  had  flourished  in  no 
small  measure  because  of  the  neglect  of  preaching 
on  the  part  of  those  who  were  both  competent  and 
responsible. 

Preaching  the  Vocation  of  Dominicans 

This  condition  of  affairs  had  been  clearly  recog¬ 
nized  by  the  Fourth  General  Council  of  the  Lateran, 
which  Dominic  had  attended  in  the  character  of  a 
theologian.  This  council  severely  arraigned  the 
bishops,  to  whom  the  office  of  preaching  primarily 
belonged,  for  the  neglect  of  this  most  sacred  and 
necessary  duty;  and  it  decreed  that  in  the  future, 
either  in  their  own  persons  or  through  capable  and 
zealous  representatives,  they  should  provide  preach¬ 
ers  for  the  people.  It  was  primarily  to  supply  these 
preachers,  not  as  the  representatives  of  the  bishops 
but  of  the  Holy  See,  that  St.  Dominic  conceived  the 
idea  of  instituting  a  religious  order  whose  single 
purpose  should  be  preaching  and  whose  apostolate 
should  be  coextensive  with  the  Church.  And  the 
moment  the  Institute  was  confirmed,  preaching  did 
become  its  dominating  idea,  imparting  to  every 
other  one  of  its  constituent  elements  their  signif¬ 
icance,  purpose  and  power.  If  the  saint  embodied 
in  his  plan  a  modified  monasticism,  it  was  to  sanctify 


112 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


his  followers,  that  they  might  preach  with  greater 
fervor  and  unction ;  for  they  who  would  inflame 
others  with  the  Are  of  divine  love  must  themselves 
first  burn  with  that  celestial  sentiment.  If  he  in¬ 
sisted  on  an  unflagging  devotion  to  study,  it  was 
that  they  might  expound  the  Word  of  God  with  in¬ 
creased  effectiveness  and,  while  disarming  their  op¬ 
ponents,  equip  themselves  with  every  weapon  that 
could  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  enemies  of  the 
Church  through  the  ministry  of  preaching.  Study, 
therefore,  was  not  cultivated  for  merely  academic 
display,  but  for  the  salvation  of  souls.  This  princi¬ 
ple  had  been  formally  and  permanently  embodied  in 
the  Constitutions  of  the  Order  in  these  words  :  “Our 
studies  must  principally  tend,  and  that  with  an  ar¬ 
dent  zeal,  towards  assisting  the  souls  of  our  neigh¬ 
bors.”  Humbert  of  Romans,  fifth  Master  General 
of  the  Order,  conveys  the  same  idea  in  the  following 
words :  “Our  studies  should  tend  principally,  ar¬ 
dently,  and  above  everything  to  make  us  useful  to 
souls.”  And,  again,  he  gives  preaching  the  primacy 
of  excellence  among  all  the  interests  of  the  Order : 
“Of  all  the  good  works  accomplished  by  the  Order, 
the  best  and  most  fruitful  is  the  work  of  preaching.” 
In  order  that  there  might  be  no  misconception  re¬ 
garding  the  matter,  and  that  neither  local  needs  nor 
personal  preferences  might  lead  the  Institute  from 
the  designs  of  St.  Dominic,  its  purpose  and  mission 
were  indelibly  recorded  in  the  Constitutions  in  the 
following  words :  “Our  Order  has  been  especially 
instituted  for  preaching  and  for  the  salvation  of 
souls.”  St.  Thomas,  therefore,  is  supported  by  un¬ 
impeachable  authority  when  he  claims  for  the  Or¬ 
der  freedom  to  preach  as  its  right  and  its  honor. 


THE  ORDER’ OF  PREACHERS 


113 


It  will  be  seen,  then,  that  the  brethren,  apart  from 
the  significance  of  their  official  title  —  Order  of 
Preachers — were  to  constitute  a  religious  commun¬ 
ity  consecrated  by  its  founder  as  well  as  by  the 
Holy  See  to  the  dissemination  of  religious  truth 
through  the  medium  of  the  pulpit.  So  zealously  and 
effectively  did  they  devote  themselves  to  their  mis¬ 
sion,  even  in  the  days  preceding  their  confirmation, 
that  it  seemed  eminently  proper  to  Innocent  III  to 
address  them  as  “the  Order  of  Preachers.”  Also, 
it  was  in  the  character  of  apostolic  preachers  that 
they  were  confirmed  by  Honorius  III  in  these 
words :  “Honorius,  the  Bishop,  Servant  of  the  serv¬ 
ants  of  God,  to  our  dear  son  Dominic,  Prior  of  St. 
Romain  of  Toulouse,  *  *  *  we,  considering  that 
the  brethren  of  your  Order  will  be  the  champions 
of  the  Faith  and  true  lights  of  the  world,  do  con¬ 
firm  the  Order,  etc.”  Innocent  IV  acknowledged 
the  supremacy  of  preaching  among  all  the  works  of 
the  Order  when  he  thus  expressed  himself :  “The 
work  of  evangelical  preaching  by  which  you  come 
to  the  assistance  of  the  clergy  in  their  labors  among 
the  faithful  must  be  the  most  carefully  safeguarded 
of  all  works  that  are  undertaken  for  the  good  of 
souls,  and  no  kind  of  charitable  works  whatever 
must  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  it.”  1  hese  words 
were  addressed  to  the  Master  General  when  the  lat¬ 
ter,  in  full  agreement  with  his  brethren,  objected  to 
having  the  spiritual  direction  of  various  sisterhoods 
imposed  upon  them. 

St  Dominic’s  Plan  Unique 

In  its  plan  and  purpose  the  Institute  is  unique,  for 
of  all  the  orders  of  the  Middle  Ages  the  Friars 


114 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Preachers  was  the  only  one  formally  approved  by 
the  Holy  See  for  the  single  purpose  of  universal 
preaching.  It  had  occurred  to  no  other  founder  of 
a  religious  institute  to  petition  the  Holy  See  for  per¬ 
mission  to  establish  an  order  in  which  the  practice 
of  apostolic  preaching,  after  long  years  of  scientific 
training,  should  not  be  a  temporary  privilege  but  an 
inherent  right. 

It  is  true  that,  a  century  before,  St.  Norbert  had 
received  for  himself  a  general  permission  to  preach 
wherever  he  would.  Afterwards  it  was  suggested 
to  him  by  the  Bishop  of  Laon  that  he  found  an  or¬ 
der  for  the  purpose  of  continuing  his  work  after  his 
death.  This  he  did,  but  provided  for  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  parishes  as  well  as  preaching  in  his  institute. 
And  although  the  followers  of  St.  Norbert  rapidly 
increased  in  number  until  they  became  a  most  num¬ 
erous  body,  the  division  of  their  efforts  between 
parish  work  and  the  larger  apostolate  of  preaching 
rendered  it  impossible  for  them  adequately  to  supply 
the  urgent  needs  of  the  pulpit.  This  is  clearly 
shown  by  the  burning  words  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Fourth  Lateran  Council  deploring  the  lack  of  effec¬ 
tive  preaching  in  the  Church.  Nor  does  St.  Norbert 
seem  to  have  adopted  any  special  measure  to  qualify 
them  as  a  body  to  preach  more  effectively  than  the 
parish  clergy.  To  St.  Dominic,  therefore,  must  be 
accorded  the  credit  of  having  first  conceived  the 
splendid  idea  of  an  institute  wholly  given  over  to 
the  extirpation  of  heresy  and  the  propagation  of  the 
Gospel  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  The  administration 
of  parishes  did  not  enter  into  its  interests  because 
St.  Dominic  desired  his  disciples  to  possess  not  a 
local  but  a  universal  character — to  preach  the  Word 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


115 


of  God  not  one  day  in  the  week  but  every  day.  The 
chapter  of  1228  decided  the  matter  formally  when 
it  forbade  the  brethren  to  accept  churches  that  car¬ 
ried  with  them  parish  obligations. 

Preaching  the  Chief  Work  of  the  Order 

So  jealous  were  the  Friars  Preachers  of  their 
glorious  mission  to  preach  the  Gospel  throughout 
the  entire  world  that  they  could  not  suffer  the 
thought  of  being  diverted  from  it  by  any  other 
work,  however  meritorious  in  itself.  This  applied, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  the  care  and  direction  of  other 
religious  communities.  At  the  Most  General  Chap¬ 
ter  of  1228  the  following  was  enacted :  “In  the  name 
of  obedience  and  under  penalty  of  excommunica¬ 
tion,  we  formally  forbid  any  of  the  brethren  to  ar¬ 
range  in  any  way  for  nuns  or  communities  of  relig¬ 
ious  women  of  any  sort  to  be  committed  to  the  care 
of  the  Order.  And  at  the  same  time  we  forbid  any 
one  to  receive  any  woman  to  the  habit  or  to  pro¬ 
fession.”  This  did  not  at  first  apply  to  the  Dominican 
nuns,  whose  Order  St.  Dominic  himself  had  founded. 
But  when  their  numbers  greatly  increased  with  suc¬ 
ceeding  years  the  prohibition  was  entended  to  in¬ 
clude  them  also.  It  was  the  mission  of  the  Friars 
Preachers  to  proclaim  and  reveal  the  glory  of  di¬ 
vine  truth  to  a  world  given  over  to  untruth,  and  to 
show  forth  the  beauty  of  the  Christian  life  to  an 
age  of  sensuousness  and  luxury.  To  this  end  they 
would  bend  all  their  energies,  as  long  as  the  Church 
did  not  call  upon  them  to  assume  new  interests  and 
obligations. 


116 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


From  the  very  foundation  of  the  Order  all  its  en¬ 
lightened  legislation,  its  scientific  organization,  its 
spiritual  exercises  and  its  academic  activities  were 
directed  to  the  end  of  forming  preachers  devoted  to 
the  cause  and  zealous  in  the  the  work  of  preach¬ 
ing  the  Word  of  God  and  defending  the  Faith 
against  the  attacks  of  its  enemies.  It  is  true 
that  the  urgent  necessities  of  the  New  World, 
and  the  missionary  character  of  our  own  coun¬ 
try  in  particular,  have  compelled  the  Friars 
Preachers  to  add  to  their  apostolate  the  care  of 
parishes.  But  this  is  merely  incidental  to  the  real 
work  of  the  Order,  which  even  in  America,  is  and 
ever  has  been  preaching.  Were  the  followers  of 
St.  Dominic  disposed  for  any  conceivable  reason  to 
depart  from  the  path  of  their  vocation, the  very  name 
they  bear  —  Order  of  Preachers  —  would  prevent 
them  from  doing  so.  Before  all  else,  and  in  spite  of 
all  else,  they  must  be  an  order  of  religious  conse¬ 
crated  to  the  sublime  mission  of  preaching  Jesus 
Christ  and  Him  crucified.  Should  they  ever  lose 
sight  of  that  end,  they  would  be  false  to  the  sacred 
purpose  for  which  they  were  founded,  disloyal  to 
the  spirit  of  their  holy  founder  and  unworthy  of  the 
name  they  bear.  Fortunately,  the  ever-growing 
and  widening  activity  of  their  zealous  apostolate 
precludes  the  possibility  of  such  a  misfortune.  The 
preaching  of  the  Word  was  the  one  field  in  which 
St.  Dominic  labored  throughout  his  active  life  and 
the  end  to  which  he  directed  the  efforts  of  all  his 
followers.  He  himself,  as  his  contemporaries  tell 
us,  strove  to  speak  of  God  to  every  one  he  met  on 
the  highways.  He  scarcely  ever  passed  through  a 
town  on  his  many  exhausting  journeys  without 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  117 

preaching  to  the  people,  either  in  its  churches  or  in 
its  streets.  This  was  the  spirit  of  apostleship  which 
he  left  as  a  priceless  legacy  to  his  brethren.  To 
this  inheritance  the  Order  has  remained  true  for 
seven  hundred  years,  and  the  glorious  fruitage  of  its 
long  centuries  of  consecrated  effort  are  the  myriad 
souls  that  through  its  instrumentality  have  attained 
eternal  blessedness. 

Preachers  to  All 

Eager  to  begin  his  work  for  souls,  St.  Dominic 
lost  no  time  in  launching  his  Order  upon  its  chosen 
mission.  When  they  were  as  yet  but  seventeen  in 
number,  and  only  a  few  months  approved  at  Rome, 
he  dispersed  them  over  the  face  of  Europe,  that  they 
might  at  once  begin  the  planting  of  the  seed  which 
in  a  few  short  years  would  produce  so  bounteous  a 
harvest.  They  were  not  to  be  mechanical  oracles  of 
the  Divine  Word,  discharging  their  duties  in  a  per¬ 
functory  manner,  as  mere  routine  tasks  and  in  dull 
conventional  form.  They  were  to  possess  a  divine 
passion  for  souls  that  would  beget  in  them  the  spirit, 
the  very  soul,  of  apostolic  preaching.  Their  efforts 
were  not  to  be  confined  to  imposing  churches,  vast 
congregations  and  formal  occasions ;  but  every¬ 
where,  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances,  they 
were  to  seize  the  opportunity  to  proclaim  to  listen¬ 
ing  ears  the  glory  of  God’s  kingdom  and  the  qual¬ 
ities  of  its  citizenship.  And  this  was  the  spirit  of 
Dominican  preaching.  Like  true  disciples  of  their 
founder,  the  Friars  addressed  themselves  with  touch¬ 
ing  simplicity  to  the  humble  folk  in  the  rural  dis¬ 
tricts,  in  the  villages  and  along  the  highways.  With 


118 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


a  masterful  grasp  of  the  Scriptures  and  with  incisive 
logic  they  confronted  and  confounded  the  heretic 
and  the  rationalist.  In  the  university  pulpits  of 
Europe  they  astonished  students  and  professors 
with  the  variety  and  extent  of  their  erudition,  while 
at  the  same  time  they  touched  their  hearts  with  the 
moving  fervor  of  their  message.  Before  crowned 
heads  they  preached  disagreeable  truths  with  the 
fearlessness  and  intrepidity  of  apostles.  In  univer¬ 
sities,  courts  and  cathedrals,  in  village  churches, 
convent  chapels  and  in  the  open  streets,  they  an¬ 
nounced  the  eternal  truths  of  God  with  that  impres¬ 
sive  earnestness  and  convincing  sincerity  that  con¬ 
stitute  the  very  soul  of  true  eloquence.  They  were 
no  respectors  of  persons,  and  admonition,  rebuke 
and  reproach  fell  from  their  lips  with  equal  force  on 
nobility  and  rabble.  To  the  saint  they  offered  a  new 
and  greater  incentive  for  his  love  and  service.  To 
the  sinner  they  brought  the  grace  of  repentance  and 
reform.  It  was,  therefore,  an  obvious  truth  to 
which  Humbert  of  Romans  gave  expression  in  the 
following  words,  addressed  to  his  brethren  thirty- 
nine  years  after  the  death  of  St.  Dominic:  “We 
teach  the  people,  we  ’teach  the  prelates,  we  teach 
the  wise  and  the  unwise,  religious  and  seculars, 
clerics  and  laymen,  nobles  and  peasants,  lowly  and 
great.” 

Once  the  Order  was  instituted  preaching  was  no 
longer  confined  to  the  universities  and  towns,  but 
was  exercised  for  the  benefit  of  those  in  the  country 
hamlets  and  villages ;  and  even  the  mountain  dis¬ 
tricts  were  in  turn  visited  by  the  zealous  children  of 
St.  Dominic,  and  from  their  eloquent  lips  heard  the 
Word  of  God.  What  a  chronicler  relates  of  Thur- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


119 


ingia  was  the  case  almost  everywhere:  “Before  the 
arrival  of  the  Friars  Preachers  the  Word  of  God 
was  rare  and  precious,  and  very  seldom  preached  to 
the  people.  The  Friars  Preachers  alone  preached 
in  every  section  of  Thuringia.” 

In  1273  half  the  preachers  employed  in  the  prin¬ 
cipal  churches  of  Paris  were  Dominicans.  Six  years 
before  that  the  Bishop  of  Amiens  complained  that 
his  people  refused  to  hear  the  Word  of  God  from 
any  save  a  Dominican  or  a  Franciscan.  So  filled 
with  the  spirit  and  responsibility  of  their  mission 
were  they  that  many  of  the  brethren  refused  to  eat 
till  they  had  first  discoursed  to  the  people  on  the 
eternal  truths.  If  a  congregation  failed  them,  they 
compromised  with  their  consciences  by  holding  spir¬ 
itual  conversation  with  some  one  not  unwilling  to 
listen.  Like  those  to  whom  our  Lord  said,  “Go  ye 
into  the  entire  world,”  they  journeyed  far  beyond 
the  confines  of  their  own  country,  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  Christendom,  even  of  civilization,  as 
St.  Dominic  had  done  and  in  a  larger  measure  at¬ 
tempted  to  do.  To  the  nations  sitting  in  spiritual 
darkness  they  were,  indeed,  “the  true  lights,”  as 
Honorius  had  called  them,  that  first  revealed  to  them 
the  glorious  vision  of  salvation  through  Christ.  In 
the  all-too-few  years  of  St.  Dominic’s  administration 
of  the  Order  they  had  preached  in  every  country  of 
Europe,  as  well  as  to  the  pagan  tribes  of  Cumans 
who  inhabited  the  steppes  of  the  Danube  and  the 
Dnieper. 

Preaching  to  Infidels 

So  great  was  the  confidence  placed  by  the  Church 
in  the  preaching  of  the  Dominicans  that  they  w ere 


120 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


especially  authorized  by  the  Holy  See  to  preach  cru¬ 
sades  against  the  Saracens  in  defense  of  the  Holy 
Land.  Of  such  great  importance  did  this  work 
finally  become  that  to  secure  its  greater  efficiency 
Humbert  of  Romans  wrote  a  book  entitled,  “A 
Tract  on  Preaching  Against  the  Saracens,  Infidels 
and  Pagans.”  Indeed,  it  would  seem  that  the  greater 
part  of  their  preaching  in  the  first  century  of  their 
existence  was  to  non-Catholics,  whether  to  the  Albi- 
genses,  who  infected  the  simple  people  with  the 
virus  of  heresy,  the  infidels,  who  rejected  the  mag¬ 
istracy  of  the  Church,  or  the  rationalists  of  the 
schools,  who  made  the  human  intellect  the  god  of 
their  idolatry.  It  was  so  with  St.  Dominic  himself, 
and  it  was  but  natural  that  the  Order  should  wish 
to  follow  in  his  footsteps.  So  faithfully  did  they 
discharge  this  duty  towards  those  who,  led  by  false 
teachers,  had  left  the  pale  of  the  Church,  that  in  the 
early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  Giordano  da 
Rivolto,  a  famous  pulpit  orator  of  the  time,  could 
say  that,  owing  to  the  activity  of  the  Order,  heresy 
had  almost  entirely  disappeared  from  the  Church. 

The  natural  consequence  of  this  all-embracing 
apostolate  was  that  the  preaching  of  the  Domini¬ 
cans  took  on  a  decidedly  doctrinal  character.  The 
moral  virtues  were  never  neglected,  and  when  the 
occasion  was  suitable  they  were  inculcated  with 
earnestness  and  unction.  But  the  times  demanded 
that,  more  than  anything  else,  the  Faith  be  defended 
against  the  attacks  of  the  heretics  and  against  the 
insidious  poisons  which  oriental  philosophy  was  in¬ 
jecting  into  the  universities  of  Europe. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  leaders  of  the  Albi- 
genses  were  well  versed  in  the  Scriptures,  which  they 


THE.  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


121 


distorted  to  their  own  purposes,  and  supported  their 
heresies  with  specious  reasoning.  In  the  schools 
many  a  sophism  was  set  forth  and  many  a  heresy 
defended  with  a  plausibleness  well  calculated  to  dis¬ 
concert  any  one  not  thoroughly  familiar  with  the 
science  of  theology  and  philosophy.  To  meet  these 
enemies  of  truth,  and  to  destroy  their  evil  influence 
over  the  minds  of  their  victims,  it  was  necessary 
that  the  Friars  Preachers  be  well  versed  in  the  sa¬ 
cred  sciences  and  that  their  preaching  be  solid  and 
doctrinal.  “The  preacher,”  as  Blessed  Humbert 
puts  it,  “must  clearly  grasp  what  he  wishes  to  say, 
for  the  subject-matter  of  his  sermons  is  God,  the 
angels,  man,  heaven,  the  evil  one,  the  world,  hell, 
the  commandments,  the  evangelical  counsels,  the 
sacraments,  Holy  Scripture,  the  virtues  and  the 
vices.”  From  this  summary  of  the  Dominican 
preacher’s  topics  it  is  quite  evident  how  necessary  it 
was  that  he  have  an  exceedingly  comprehensive 
grasp  of  theology  and  that  his  training  in  ecclesi¬ 
astical  science  be  most  thorough ;  and  such  in¬ 
deed  it  was. 

Not  All  Preachers 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  because 
the  Institute  bore  the  name  “Order  of  Preachers” 
all  its  clerical  members  were,  without  exception, 
highly  gifted  preachers.  While  such  was  the  main 
consideration  in  the  selection  of  candidates,  it  was 
impossible  to  guarantee  that  each  novice  invested 
with  the  habit  would  develop  along  the  physical  and 
mental  lines  necessary  for  the  efficient  discharge  of 
that  office.  Those  who  were  to  be  assigned  to  the 
work  of  preaching  must  have  the  necessary  ability 


122 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


to  profit  by  the  long  and  exacting  course  of  studies 
which  constituted  the  preparation  for  that  work. 
Those  who  fell  short  of  those  requirements  were  as¬ 
signed  to  some  other  occupation ;  for  the  Friar 
Preacher  in  the  pulpit  must  be  above  all  things  a 
representative  member  of  that  Institute  to  which 
the  Church  in  a  special  manner  had  committed  the 
work  of  preaching  the  Gospel  throughout  the  world. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  those  gifted  with  the  neces¬ 
sary  qualities  were  not  to  be  diverted  to  other  tasks. 
Thus  it  is  recorded  in  the  Constitutions :  “Those 
suited  to  the  office  of  preaching  shall  be  employed 
in  no  other  work.”  Indeed,  it  would  be  almost  im¬ 
possible  to  imagine  a  wiser  aad  saner  body  of  laws 
guarding  in  every  way  the  dignity  and  efficiency  of 
the  sacred  office  of  preaching  than  that  formulated 
in  various  chapters  and  set  forth  in  the  Dominican 
Constitutions. 

In  this  way  the  Order  planned  and  legislated  to 
keep  always  before  the  eyes  of  its  members  the  fact 
that  as  Dominicans  their  chief  business  is  preach¬ 
ing  the  salutary  truths  of  religion.  If  their  spiritual 
character  was  formed  along  the  lines  of  what  was 
best  in  the  ancient  asceticism  of  the  Church,  it  was 
to  the  end  that  they  might  proclaim  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  with  the  touching  fervor  and  compelling 
force  of  personal  piety  and  conviction.  If  their  in¬ 
tellectual  training  was  of  the  severest  character,  if 
the  curricula  of  their  colleges  embraced  the  whole 
field  of  knowledge,  human  and  divine,  it  was  in  or¬ 
der  that  they  might  be  prepared  to  meet  successfully 
the  enemies  of  the  Faith,  whatever  the  weapons  of 
warfare  employed  against  them.  How  well  the  end 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


123 


sought  in  this  magnificent  plan  has  been  achieved 
is  written  in  indelible  characters  on  every  page  of 
the  Church’s  history  for  the  last  seven  hundred 
years.  The  detailed  recital  of  this  achievement  shall 
be  the  subject  of  the  following  pages. 


PART  III 

THE  ACHIEVEMENTS  OF  THE  ORDER 


DOMINICAN  ACHIEVEMENTS 


Education 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  Order  of  Friars 
Preachers  was  the  first  to  be  established  by  the 
Church  with  an  academic  mission.  It  was  inevitable 
that  such  an  order,  which  made  science  one  of  the 
formal  and  essential  means  to  the  attainment  of  its 
purpose,  and  was  recruited  so  largely  from  the  stu¬ 
dents  and  professors  of  the  universities,  should  itself 
in  time  exercise  educational  functions.  Like  Minerva, 
springing  full-armed  from  the  head  of  Jupiter,  the 
Friars  Preachers  emerged  from  their  first  cloisters 
fully  equipped  to  exercise  the  most  profound  influ¬ 
ence  upon  the  educational  trend  of  their  times. 

The  high  standards  of  education  which  St.  Dom¬ 
inic  had  set  for  his  followers  necessitated  schools 
possessed  of  the  most  comprehensive  curricula  and 
presided  over  by  teachers  whose  competency  could 
not  be  questioned.  It  was  in  the  pursuit  of  this  pol¬ 
icy  that  the  saint  sought,  whenever  possible,  to  es¬ 
tablish  foundations  in  the  university  cities  of  Europe. 
But  the  studies  which  might  satisfy  the  ordinary 
university  student,  lay  and  cleric, could  not, of  course 
suffice  for  those  whose  vocation  made  them  the  for¬ 
mal  champions  of  the  Faith  and  the  dreaded  antag¬ 
onists  of  its  enemies.  For  this  reason,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  university  courses  at  Paris  were  supple¬ 
mented  by  lectures  at  the  convent  which  enabled  the 
youthful  Dominican  thoroughly  to  cover  the  matter 


128 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  his  study  and  obtain  a  fixed  and  accurate  knowl¬ 
edge  of  his  subject.  From  time  to  time  the  curricu¬ 
lum  was  expanded,  until  before  long  the  course  of 
study  at  St.  James  rivalled  that  of  the  university 
itself. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  fame  of  the  professors 
at  the  Dominican  convent  began  to  attract  the  at¬ 
tention  of  both  students  and  professors  of  the  uni¬ 
versity.  Many  of  the  former  abandoned  the  courses 
at  the  older  institutions  to  follow  the  lectures  of  the 
Friars  Preachers.  A  yet  larger  number  alternated 
between  both  institutions.  The  growing  popularity 
of  the  Dominican  school  and  the  fame  of  its  teachers 
were  not  lost  upon  the  faculty  of  the  university  hard 
by,  and  before  long  the  priory  college  received  the 
extraordinary  compliment  of  being  incorporated 
with  the  University  of  Paris,  the  foremost  educa¬ 
tional  institution  of  the  Christian  world.  A  further 
recognition  of  the  professors  at  St.  James  was  ex¬ 
pressed  when  Roland  of  Cremona,  its  doctor  of  the¬ 
ology,  was  awarded  a  chair  of  theology  at  the  uni¬ 
versity  in  1229.  Two  years  later  another  chair  was 
conferred  upon  John  of  St.  Giles,  also  one  of  the  pro¬ 
fessors  at  the  Dominican  school.  Thus  the  Friars 
Preachers  enjoyed  the  unique  distinction  not  only 
of  being  the  first  religious  Order  to  be  represented 
in  the  faculty  of  the  university,  but  of  being  the  only 
one  to  possess  two  chairs  in  that  illustrious  body. 
So  it  happened  that  while  the  sons  of  St.  Dominic 
came  to  Paris  to  learn,  they  remained  to  teach. 

The  school  at  Paris  represented  the  highest  class 
of  educational  institutions  among  the  Dominicans. 
Similar  convents  of  higher  studies  were  established 
at  Oxford,  Cologne,  Montpellier  and  Bologna  in 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


129 


1248;  and  at  Florence,  Genoa,  Toulouse,  Barcelona 
and  Salamanca  at  the  end  of  the  century.  But  be¬ 
sides  these  schools  of  the  highest  order  there  were 
two  other  grades  of  educational  establishments  in 
use  among  the  Friars  Preachers.  The  first  of  these 
were  the  simple  priories  in  which  only  Scripture  and 
theology  were  taught.  These  were  for  the  use  of 
students  who  were  disqualified  from  aspiring  to  an 
academic  career  or  the  apostolate  of  preaching.  But 
in  these,  as  well  as  in  the  two  higher  grades  of 
schools,  there  w^ere  doctors  of  theology,  as  pre¬ 
scribed  by  the  Constitution.  The  schools  of  the  mid¬ 
dle  class  —  Studia  Solemnia  —  corresponded  to  our 
modern  normal  schools  and  possessed  an  elaborate 
faculty  and  a  more  comprehensive  curriculum.  All 
of  these  schools  were  open  to  the  public  and  were 
freely  attended  by  secular  as  well  as  Dominican  stu¬ 
dents.  Over  all  these  schools  the  Order  exercised  a 
most  careful  supervision.  In  the  beginning  the  pro¬ 
fessors  were  all  appointed  by  the  general  chapters 
of  the  Order.  Each  year  an  official  supervisor, 
called  “visitor,”  carefully  examined  these  institu¬ 
tions  of  learning  and  reported  to  the  Master  General 
on  their  efficiency  and  respective  needs. 

Among  the  decrees  formulated  at  the  Fourth  Lat- 
eran  Council  (1215)  which  St.  Dominic  had  attended, 
wras  one  commanding  all  archbishops  to  employ  a 
Master  of  Theology  in  their  metropolitan  churches 
for  the  better  education  of  candidates  for  the  priest¬ 
hood.  It  is  significant,  howrever,  that  the  archbish¬ 
ops  who  possessed  Dominican  priories  in  their  sees 
felt  themselves  dispensed  from  carrying  out  this 
enactment  of  the  council;  for  every  such  priory 


130 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


was  a  seminary  possessing1  an  elaborate  course  of 
studies,  available  to  secular  as  well  as  religious  stu¬ 
dents.  Even  when,  some  time  later,  they  were 
obliged  to  obey  literally  the  mandate  of  the  council 
and  establish  their  own  metropolitan  schools  of 
ecclesiastical  science,  almost  invariably  they  invited 
Dominicans  to  fill  the  chairs  of  Scripture  and  the¬ 
ology.  So  it  was  at  Lyons  for  three  hundred  years. 
So  it  was  at  Toulouse,  Bordeaux,  Tortosa,  Valen¬ 
cia,  Urgel  and  Milan. 

When  a  university  was  established  in  a  city  in 
which  a  Dominican  house  already  existed,  no  pro¬ 
vision  was  made  in  its  pontifical  charter  for  a  theo¬ 
logical  faculty.  It  was  understood  that  the  neigh¬ 
boring  convent  of  the  Friars  Preachers  would  sup¬ 
ply  the  place  of  a  school  of  theology.  And  when 
the  growth  of  these  institutions  made  it  desirable 
that  they  should  possess  a  theological  faculty  affili¬ 
ated  with  the  university,  this  need  was  met  by  the 
incorporation  of  the  Dominican  school  with  the  uni¬ 
versity.  This  practice,  begun  in  the  closing  years 
of  the  fourteenth,  continued  till  the  early  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century. 

In  this  manner  the  Order  began  to  exercise  a  pro¬ 
found  influence,  not  merely  upon  the  theological 
thought  of  the  times  but  upon  the  entire  intellectual 
life  of  the  age.  Indeed,  it  can  be  truthfully  said  that 
by  1260  the  Dominicans  had  taken  possession  of  the 
universities  of  Europe.  As  we  have  seen,  they  filled 
two  chairs  at  Paris.  John  of  St.  Giles  successively 
held  the  chair  of  theology  in  no  fewer  than  four  uni¬ 
versities.  Oxford  and  Bologna,  which  had  given  so 
freely  of  their  students  to  swell  the  ranks  of  the  Or- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


131 


der,  were  soon  rewarded  for  their  generosity  by 
receiving  back  from  the  Dominican  Order  some  of 
their  most  renowned  professors.  Side  by  side  with 
the  universities  of  Orleans,  Toulouse  and  Montpel¬ 
lier,  their  schools  sprang  up  and  flourished.  It  may 
be  said  that  they  practically  created  the  University 
of  Dublin.  Their  influence  was  supreme  at  Oxford, 
Paris  and  Bologna.  Of  the  Dominicans  at  these  in¬ 
stitutions  a  modern  writer  has  said  :  “They  did  more 
than  any  other  teachers  to  give  the  knowledge 
taught  in  them  its  distinctive  form.” 

The  older  religious  Orders  generously  recognized 
the  preeminence  of  the  Friars  Preachers  in  the  do¬ 
main  of  ecclesiastical  science  and  sought  their 
assistance  to  enable  them  to  participate  in  the  in¬ 
tellectual  life  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  Cis¬ 
tercians  employed  Dominican  Masters  of  Theology 
to  preside  over  the  theological  schools  of  all  their 
abbeys.  Many  of  the  other  religious  orders  did 
likewise. 

But  perhaps  the  highest  tribute  paid  to  the  educa¬ 
tional  efficiency  of  the  Dominicans  in  the  fourteenth 
century  was  their  selection  by  the  Roman  pontiffs 
themselves  to  constitute  the  theological  faculties  of 
their  Roman  schools.  In  1305  Clement  V  appointed 
a  Dominican  to  preside  over  the  theological  school 
of  the  papal  court  at  Avignon.  It  is  not  without 
reason,  therefore,  that  Dr.  O’Leary,  the  Protestant 
biographer  of  St.  Dominic,  says :  “It  is  worth  while 
observing  that  the  Dominicans  were  the  first  to 
undertake  the  regular  theological  training  of  the 
clergy.”  In  their  own  priories  and  in  the  schools  of 
other  orders,  in  metropolitan  seminaries  and  uni- 


132 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


versity  halls,  the  Friars  Preachers  reorganized  the 
whole  system  of  ecclesiastical  studies  of  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century,  expanding  their  scope  and  enhancing 
their  efficiency  by  means  of  a  pedagogical  system 
which  placed  them  on  a  solid  and  scientific  basis. 
When  we  consider  the  vast  number  of  these  educa¬ 
tional  institutions  controlled  by  the  Order  of 
Preachers,  we  can  readily  understand  their  influ¬ 
ence  on  the  age  and  their  primacy  among  the  edu¬ 
cational  institutions  of  the  thirteenth  century.  It 
was,  therefore,  no  empty  compliment  to  ascribe  to 
St.  Dominic  the  honor  of  being  the  first  minister  of 
education  in  Europe. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  ecclesiastics  took  no 
part  in  the  teaching  or  study  of  the  liberal  arts  and 
natural  sciences  in  the  time  of  St.  Dominic.  The 
Friars  Preachers,  however,  saw  that  in  these 
studies,  conducted  under  proper  auspices,  there  were 
vast  possibilities  for  the  defence  of  the  Faith  against 
the  assaults  of  the  rationalists.  But  it  would  have 
been  imprudent  boldly  to  run  counter  to  the  usage 
of  the  times  by  abruptly  throwing  open  their  lecture 
halls  to  the  study  of  the  proscribed  sciences.  Con¬ 
sequently,  they  aimed  at  a  gradual  introduction  of 
these  subjects  to  the  student  body.  The  study  of 
the  liberal  arts  was  first  permitted  to  individuals, 
and  some  time  later,  in  1250,  their  place  in  the  Do¬ 
minican  curriculum  was  firmly  established. 

In  1260  a  yet  bolder  step  was  taken  in  the  intro¬ 
duction  of  the  natural  sciences  to  the  attention  of 
the  religious  students.  By  the  beginning  of  the 
lourteenth  century  the  moral  sciences  had  so  clearly 
established  their  claim  to  the  consideration  of  eccle- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


133 


siastical  students  that  the  general  chapter  of  1315 
commanded  the  Masters  of  Students  to  lecture  on 
the  ethics,  politics  and  economics  of  Aristotle  for 
the  benefit  of  their  own  religious — a  privilege  which 
was  shortly  after  extended  to  secular  students.  In 
the  following  century  the  services  of  the  Friars 
Preachers  were  in  great  demand  for  the  teaching  of 
these  subjects,  and  the  chairs  of  philosophy  in  many 
of  the  universities  were  filled  by  members  of  the 
Order. 

But  it  was  not  merely  as  expositors  of  ecclesias¬ 
tical  subjects  that  the  Friars  Preachers  won  their 
conspicuous  place  in  the  front  rank  of  the  educators 
of  the  Church.  Nothing  in  the  entire  realm  of  truth 
was  foreign  to  their  interests.  No  opportunity  was 
lost  to  establish  educational  institutions  in  the  fields 
in  which  they  labored.  Thus,  colleges  of  higher  ed¬ 
ucation  were  founded  by  them,  such  as  that  of  St. 
Gregory  at  Valladolid,  in  1488;  and  the  College  of 
St.  Thomas,  founded  in  1515  at  Seville. 

To  the  Dominicans  belongs  the  honor  of  introduc¬ 
ing  the  blessings  of  education  into  the  New  World 
of  Columbus.  They  lost  no  time  in  establishing  uni¬ 
versities  in  each  of  their  principal  American  prov¬ 
inces.  Forty  years  after  the  discovery  of  America 
these  Dominican  pioneers,  who  came  not  to  exploit 
the  Indian  but  to  confer  upon  him  the  blessings  of 
Christian  civilization,  established  a  university  at  San 
Domingo  in  the  West  Indies.  In  1605  the  Domini¬ 
can  bishop  of  Santiago  de  Cuba,  Juan  de  las  Cabezas, 
instituted  the  University  of  Havana.  A  similar  insti¬ 
tution  was  founded  in  Santa  Fe  de  Bogata  in  1612, 
and  in  Quito  in  1681.  At  Havana  the  Dominicans 


134 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


established  a  university  in  1721.  The  famous  Univer¬ 
sity  of  San  Marcos,  in  Lima,  was  founded  by  the 
Friars  Preachers  during  the  incumbency  of  the  Do¬ 
minican,  Jerome  de  Loaysa,  the  first  bishop  and 
archbishop  of  that  city.  From  the  nearby  Do¬ 
minican  Priory  of  the  Rosary,  also  founded  by  the 
saintly  archbishop,  the  university  drew  its  chief  pro¬ 
fessors.  The  University  of  St.  Thomas  in  Manila 
was  founded  by  the  Order  in  1645  and  is  still 
in  a  most  flourishing  condition.  Affiliated  with  the 
university  are  two  colleges,  also  administered  by 
the  Order.  From  its  foundation  till  the  present  day 
the  ecclesiastical  faculties  of  the  University  of  Fri¬ 
bourg,  in  Switzerland,  with  the  exception  of  a 
single  chair  have  been  composed  exclusively  of 
members  of  the  Order  of  Preachers.  The  most 
recent  of  Dominican  educational  institutions  is  the 
Collegio  Angelico  at  Rome,  which  enjoys  the  char¬ 
acter  of  a  pontifical  college.  To  these  may  be 
added  the  famous  biblical  school  of  the  French 
Dominicans  at  Jerusalem,  founded  some  twenty- 
six  years  ago. 

In  this  rough  sketch  of  the  institutions  of  learn¬ 
ing  established  and  presided  over  by  the  Dominicans 
is  set  forth  in  some  manner  the  fidelity  of  the  Friars 
Preachers  for  seven  hundred  years  to  the  cause  of 
Christian  education  and  the  scope  and  variety  of 
their  educational  interests. 

Theology  and  Philosophy 

When  we  consider  the  elaborate  scheme  of  educa¬ 
tion  evolved  by  St.  Dominic  for  his  followers,  the 
thorough  manner  in  which  it  was  carried  out,  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  135 

avidity  with  which  its  opportunities  were  seized 
upon,  and  the  high  end  to  which  they  were  conse¬ 
crated,  it  will  be  readily  understood  that  the  prod¬ 
igies  of  learning  who,  with  unfailing  regularity, 
rose  in  each  succeeding  generation,  were  not  acci¬ 
dental  to  the  Order’s  career  but  the  legitimate  fruit 
of  the  holy  founder’s  genius  and  planning.  In  trac¬ 
ing  the  educational  activities  of  the  Friars  Preach¬ 
ers  we  have  in  large  measure  treated  of  their  work, 
as  an  Order,  in  the  fields  of  theology  and  philosophy. 
In  this  chapter,  therefore,  we  shall  devote  ourselves 
to  the  consideration  of  those  sons  of  St.  Dominic 
who  have  won  imperishable  renown  in  these  depart¬ 
ments  of  ecclesiastical  science. 

The  first  star  to  shine  in  the  Dominican  firmament 
was  Albert  the  Great,  “the  Universal  Doctor.”  He 
was  the  first  of  the  youthful  Order  publicly  to  teach 
philosophy,  as  he  was  the  first  systematically  to  ap¬ 
ply  the  Aristotelian  philosophy  to  the  elucidation 
and  defense  of  theology.  In  1228  he  was  invited  to 
the  University  of  Cologne  to  reform  its  curriculum 
and  method  of  teaching. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  rationalistic  move¬ 
ment,  which  received  such  a  powerful  impetus  from 
the  genius  and  popularity  of  Abelard,  as  well  as 
from  a  widespread  diffusion  of  the  Arabian  transla¬ 
tions  of  the  Stagyrite,  had  assaulted  the  very  cita¬ 
dels  of  theology.  The  ecclesiastical  authorities  had 
employed  condemnation  and  repression  without 
avail ;  the  movement  had  already  acquired  alarming 
proportions.  At  this  critical  juncture  a  new  method 
of  attack,  as  unique  as  it  was  bold  in  its  conception, 
was  inaugurated  by  Albert.  He  had  made  a  pro- 

6 


136 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


found  study  of  all  the  writings  of  the  Philosopher, 
as  well  as  of  his  Arabian  and  Jewish  commentators, 
and  he  was  convinced  that  the  trouble  lay  not  so 
much  in  the  real  teachings  of  Aristotle  as  in  the 
unwarranted  conclusions  of  his  interpreters,  and  the 
false  readings  of  his  ignorant  or  prejudiced  transla¬ 
tors.  Acting  upon  this  knowledge,  Albert  purged 
the  peripatetic  philosophy  of  its  errors,  reduced  it  to 
a  system  adapted  to  the  needs  of  Christian  apolo¬ 
getics,  and  employed  it  as  a  weapon  of  defense  for 
theology.  In  his  hands  philosophy  could  be  truly 
defined  as  “ intellectus  quaerens  fidem  .” 

The  boldness  of  this  step  caused  the  sincere,  but 
short-sighted,  element  in  the  schools  to  gasp  with 
amazement.  Then  a  storm  of  vituperative  abuse 
and  false  accusations  burst  upon  him.  He  was  ac¬ 
cused  of  enthroning  a  pagan  within  the  very  sanctu¬ 
ary,  and  of  giving  him  the  place  of  honor  in  the 
magisterium  of  the  Church.  He  was  spoken  of  in 
such  endearing  terms  as  “the  ape  of  Aristotle”  and 
“the  Aristotelian  ass.”  Yet  it  was  this  method 
which,  without  derogating  in  the  least  degree  from 
the  dignity  and  preeminence  of  Catholic  theology, 
gave  the  first  permanent  check  to  the  progress  of 
rationalism  and  pantheism  in  Europe.  Their  utter 
rout  was  to  be  accomplished  by  one  even  greater 
than  himself. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  overestimate  the  influence 
of  Albert  upon  the  philosophical  and  theological 
thought  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Among  others  of 
his  ecclesiastical  writings,  his  contributions  to  ethics 
are  of  special  value.  He  formulated  two  new  proofs 
of  the  existence  of  God,  completed  the  Lombard’s 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


137 


doctrine  of  reprobation,  and  refuted  with  consum¬ 
mate  skill  Aristotle’s  doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  the 
world.  To  him  belongs  the  credit  of  introducing  a 
method  of  theological  exposition  which  began  the 
disarmament  of  pantheism,  checked  rationalism,  and 
which,  in  the  hands  of  his  most  illustrious  pupil,  wTas 
to  result  in  the  utter  discomfiture  of  the  enemies  of 
supernatural  truth.  This  in  itself  was  more  than 
enough  to  rank  him  with  the  foremost  scholars  of 
the  Church ;  but,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  his  great 
mind  studied  and  illuminated  other  than  ecclesias¬ 
tical  and  cognate  subjects. 

Albert  the  Great  was  not  only  a  prodigy  of  learn¬ 
ing,  but  he  was  what  is  almost  as  rare,  a  successful 
teacher.  Knowledge  and  the  power  to  impart  it  to 
others  do  not  always  go  together.  But  in  this  great 
Dominican  they  were  united  in  an  extraordinary  de¬ 
gree.  He  taught  some  of  the  greatest  intellects  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  among  whom  were  Roger 
Bacon,  the  famous  Franciscan  scientist,  Thomas  of 
Cantimpre  and  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin — the  last  two 
Dominicans.  But  of  this  brilliant  triumvirate,  im¬ 
measurably  the  greatest  wTas  the  Angel  of  the 
Schools,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

It  is  impossible  to  give  more  than  the  barest  out¬ 
line  of  his  varied  and  priceless  service  to  thirteenth- 
century  thought.  He  found  the  spirit  of  rationalism 
still  aggressive,  and  pantheism  still  exercising  a 
baneful  influence  in  many  of  the  universities  of  Eu¬ 
rope.  It  was  his  allotted  task  to  take  up  the  work 
of  Albert  and  drive  home  the  attack  so  successfully 
begun  by  his  illustrious  teacher. 

One  of  the  greatest  results  achieved  by  St. 
Thomas  in  his  active  scholastic  career  was  to  force- 


138 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


upon  the  learned  world  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  the  spheres  of  faith  and  reason  are  distinct ; 
and  that  reason  alone  can  exercise  no  independent 
jurisdiction  in  the  domain  of  supernatural  truth. 
This  was  an  event  of  vital  importance  in  the  conflict 
between  rationalism  and  faith.  In  the  development 
of  philosophical  thought,  many  questions,  originally 
of  a  strictly  metaphysical  character,  took  on  in  their 
implications  a  theological  significance  whose  solu¬ 
tion  the  theologians  claimed  for  their  exclusive 
function.  In  reprisal,  the  intellectual  liberals  of 
those  days,  following  the  example  of  Erigena  and 
Abelard,  identified  the  science  of  philosophy  with 
that  of  theology,  and  declared  that  the  mysteries  of 
religion  constituted  legitimate  matter  for  the 
searchings  and  probings  of  human  reason. 

By  the  brilliancy  and  incontrovertible  character  of 
his  argument,  St.  Thomas  forced  the  admission  that 
the  domain  of  reason  does  not  extend  to  all  the  facts 
of  supernatural  truth ;  that,  while  philosophy  may 
be  the  efficient  handmaid  of  theology,  it  can  never 
be  its  mistress,  or  even  co-laborer,  in  the  determina¬ 
tion  of  supernatural  knowledge. 

No  more  brilliant  exponent  of  the  power  of  hu¬ 
man  reason  ever  existed  than  the  Angel  of  the 
Schools ;  yet  none  was  more  keenly  conscious  of 
its  limitations  and  its  utter  impotency  where  the 
mysteries  of  religion  were  concerned.  With  un¬ 
erring  precision  he  drew  a  line  of  demarcation  be¬ 
tween  natural  and  supernatural  truths,  and  forced 
the  withdrawal  of  the  latter  from  all  discussion  that 
was  based  entirely  upon  human  reason.  In  fine,  the 
result  of  his  encounter  with  the  rationalists  was,  as 
Dr.  tiberweg  puts  it,  '‘the  complete  accomplishment 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


139 


of  the  until  then  imperfect  separation  of  natural 
from  revealed  theology,  revelation  being  now  with¬ 
drawn  as  a  theological  mystery  from  the  sphere  of 
philosophical  speculation.”  This  victory  found  con¬ 
crete  expression  in  a  decree  approved  in  Paris  in  the 
year  1271,  which  asserted  the  supremacy  of  theology 
and  forbade  the  professors  of  the  philosophical  fac¬ 
ulty  to  treat  of  any  essentially  theological  questions. 
But  this  was  only  one  of  the  many  triumphs  of  the 
master-mind,  to  whom  Huxley  referred  in  his 
“Science  and  Morals”  as  “the  other  Doctor  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  ‘Divus  Thomas as  Suarez  calls  him, 
whose  marvellous  grasp  and  subtlety  of  intellect 
seem  to  be  almost  without  parallel.” 

St.  Thomas’  marvellous  power  of  synthesis  finds 
its  most  perfect  expression  in  his  Summa.  This 
monumental  work  was  begun  in  Bologna  in  1271. 
It  is  a  vast  summary  of  all  Catholic  theology 
and  philosophy  and,  more  than  all  his  other  wri- 
ings,  furnishes  the  key  to  his  thought  and  the 
manner  of  its  expression.  In  this  stupendous 
work  he  gathers  the  scattered  and  seemingly 
unrelated  elements  of  Christian  theology,  and  clari¬ 
fies,  co-ordinates,  harmonizes  and  weaves  them 
into  a  magnificant  fabric,  wherein  theology  and  phi¬ 
losophy  conspire  to  show  forth  the  beauty  of  God  s 
eternal  truth.  Not  only  did  the  Angelic  Doctor  sum¬ 
marize,  systematize  and  illumine  all  theology,  plac¬ 
ing  it  safely  beyond  the  destructive  assaults  of 
rationalism,  but  he  completed  the  work  of  Chris¬ 
tianizing  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle.  In  fact,  the 
Angelic  Doctor  built  up  his  magnificent  system 
of  theology  on  that  very  Aristotelianism  which 


140 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


had  come  in  for  so  much  condemnation  at  the 
hands  of  the  early  Fathers  of  the  Church  as  the 
prolific  source  of  all  theological  errancy,  espe¬ 
cially  the  Arian  and  Monophysite  heresies.  He 
effectively  refuted  the  dangerous  teachings  of 
Averroes  and  Avicenna,  proving  them  heretics 
even  in  the  peripatetic  school  of  philosophy,  cre¬ 
ated  a  Christian  psychology,  subordinated  reason 
to  faith,  and  established  the  supremacy  of  dogma  in 
the  schools.  His  theological  writings  may  be  sum¬ 
med  up  in  the  words  of  Ozanam  as  “a  vast  synthesis 
of  moral  science,  in  which  was  unfolded  all  that 
could  be  known  of  God  and  man  and  their  mutual 
relations.” 

It  has  been  well  said  that  “St.  Thomas  surveyed 
the  field  of  human  thought  from  a  loftier  standpoint 
than  any  sage  of  Greece  or  Rome,  and  mapped  it  out 
with  a  fullness  and  precision  unattained  by  him 
whom  he  reverently  calls  ‘The  Philosopher’.” 

Not  the  least  service  conferred  by  the  Angelic 
Doctor  upon  his  Order  was  the  founding  of  a  school 
of  theology  which  now  for  over  six  hundred  years 
has  held  the  devotion  and  preserved  the  doctrinal 
unity  of  all  succeeding  generations  of  Dominicans. 
Ambrose  of  Sienna  elaborated  a  theological  system 
of  his  own  and  one  well  worthy  of  his  great  genius. 
But  he  destroyed  all  his  books  and  notes  out  of  re¬ 
gard  for  St.  Thomas  and  to  preserve  unity  of  teach¬ 
ing  in  the  Order. 

The  paternal  affection  entertained  by  Albert  the 
Great  for  his  illustrious  pupil,  St.  Thomas,  is 
beautifully  illustrated  by  the  following  incident : 
The  agitation  which  followed  the  adoption  of  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


141 


Aristotelian  philosophy  was  increased  by  the  new 
methods  and  new  opinions  of  St.  Thomas.  Four 
years  after  the  Angelic  Doctor’s  death,  this  hostility 
on  the  part  of  the  reactionaries  had  not  abated.  On 
the  seventh  of  March  (strange  coincidence)  1277, 
Stephen  Tempier,  Bishop  of  Paris,  condemned  four 
of  his  propositions.  Albert,  hearing  of  the  impend¬ 
ing  censure,  though  over  eighty  years  old,  and  bur¬ 
dened  with  the  infirmities  of  age,  traveled  all  the 
way  from  Cologne  to  Paris,  after  the  laborious  man¬ 
ner  of  those  days,  to  defend  the  memory  of  his  Do¬ 
minican  brother  and  illustrious  pupil.  In  the  light 
of  the  bitter  opposition  to  the  entrance  of  religious 
among  the  professors  of  the  University  of  Paris 
there  is  no  more  honorable  page  in  the  history  of 
that  university  than  the  eloquent  and  pathetic  letter 
addressed  by  the  united  faculties  of  Paris  to  the 
Master  General  of  the  Dominicans  bewailing  the 
death  of  St.  Thomas,  and  praying  that  the  university 
might  be  given  the  honor  of  watching  over  his  tomb. 

As  the  encomiums  showered  upon  St.  Thomas  by 
popes,  councils  and  theologians  are  without  number, 
we  can  afford  place  for  only  three  of  them.  Speak¬ 
ing  of  his  writings  Innocent V  said:  “The  teaching  of 
this  Doctor  beyond  all  others,  has  fitness  of  terms, 
manner  of  expression  and  soundness  of  opinions  ;  so 
that  he  who  holds  it  will  never  swerve  from  the 
path  of  truth  :  while  on  the  contrary  he  who  attacks 
it  must  always  be  suspected.” 

In  even  more  eulogistic  terms  Pope  John  XXII 
said:  “His  doctrine  was  not  other  than  miraculous. 
He  has  enlightened  the  Church  more  than  all  other 
doctors,  and  more  profit  can  be  gained  in  a  single 


142 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


year  by  the  study  of  his  works  than  by  devoting  a 
lifetime  to  that  of  other  theologians.  He  has 
wrought  as  many  miracles  as  he  has  written  ‘Arti¬ 
cles’.”  Among  many  other  beautiful  tributes  Leo 
XIII  has  given  expression  to  the  following:  “The 
oecumenical  councils,  where  blossoms  the  flowers  of 
all  earthly  wisdom,  have  always  been  careful  to  hold 
Thomas  Aquinas  in  singular  honor.”  Significant  also 
are  the  words  of  the  apostate  Bucer:  “Take  away 
St.  Thomas  and  I  will  destroy  the  Church.”  It  will 
be  seen,  therefore,  that  it  was  not  without  reason 
that  the  historian  Hallam  called  him  “the  polar  star 
of  every  true  Dominican.” 

Pope  St.  Pius  V  proclaimed  St.  Thomas  a  Doctor 
of  the  Church  in  1567.  During  the  Council  of  Trent 
his  Summa  Theologica  reposed  side  by  side  with 
the  Bible  throughout  the  deliberations  of  that  au¬ 
gust  body.  On  August  4,  1880,  Pope  Leo  XIII  pro¬ 
claimed  the  Angelic  Doctor  “Patron  of  all  Univer¬ 
sities,  Academies,  Colleges,  and  Catholic  Schools.” 
Great  as  a  theologian,  he  was  even  greater  as  a 
saint,  and  so  by  common  consent  the  Catholic  world 
honors  him  with  the  title  of  “Angelic  Doctor.” 

Another  distinguished  philosopher  and  contem¬ 
porary  of  St.  Thomas  was  Robert  of  Kilwardby, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  A  master  in  the  old 
Augustian  school  of  theology,  he  had  but  little  sym¬ 
pathy  with  the  new  methods  and  the  novel  views  of 
his  younger  Dominican  brother,  St.  Thomas.  His 
treatise  on  the  origin  and  division  of  knowledge  has 
been  called  the  most  important  introduction  to  the 
philosophy  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

As  the  primary  purpose  of  the  Order’s  existence 
is  the  extirpation  of  heresy  and  the  defence  of  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


143 


Faith,  Catholic  polemics  assumed  from  the  very  be¬ 
ginning  a  place  of  the  greatest  importance  in  the 
Dominican  school  of  theology.  The  Albigenses, 
Waldenses,  Averrohists,  Nominalists,  Rationalists, 
Arabs  and  Jews  were  the  principal  opponents  of  the 
Dominican  apologists  ;  and  against  these  enemies  of 
the  Faith  they  launched  their  attacks  with  consum¬ 
mate  skill,  tireless  energy  and,  usually,  with  entire 
success.  Among  these  valiant  athletes  of  Christ 
who  fought  so  courageously  in  defence  of  His 
honor  and  glory  we  can  mention  only  a  few  of 
the  most  conspicuous :  In  1244  Moneta  of  Cre¬ 
mona,  famous  throughout  Lombardy  for  his  eru¬ 
dition,  sanctity  and  religious  zeal,  wrote  his  work 
“Against  the  Cathari  and  Waldenses/’  It  is  re¬ 
garded  as  the  most  scholarly  work  produced  in  the 
Middle  Ages  against  these  sectaries. 

St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  was  the  unconquerable  apo¬ 
logist,  as  well  as  the  brilliant  expositor,  of  Catholic 
doctrine.  His  “Treatise  Against  Unbelievers,”  one 
of  his  greatest  compositions,  was  written  at  the  re¬ 
quest  of  St.  Raymond  of  Pennafort,  who  recognized 
the  urgent  necessity  of  a  philosophical  exposition  of 
the  Catholic  Faith  for  the  use  of  the  missionaries 
combating  the  Arabian  and  Jewish  philosophy,  then 
so  wide-spread  in  Spain.  It  is  said  that  during  its 
composition  the  saintly  author  was  often  seen  in 
ecstasy.  His  “Treatise  Against  the  Errors  of  the 
Greeks”  was  written  at  the  request  of  Urban  IV, 
who  cherished  the  hope  of  effecting  a  union  of  the 
Greeks  with  the  Latin  Church. 

St.  Antoninus,  the  gentle  Archbishop  of  Florence, 
while  not  an  apologist,  was  one  of  the  foremost  the¬ 
ologians  of  the  Order.  I  he  creation  of  the  science 


144 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  moral  theology  in  its  present  form  is  generally 
conceded  to  date  from  the  publication  of  his  monu¬ 
mental  work  on  that  subject.  No  less  worthy  of 
mention  among  the  great  theologians  of  the  Friars 
Preachers  is  Peter  Soto,  the  last  of  the  brethren  to 
lecture  publicly  at  Oxford,  and  Capreolus,  professor 
of  theology  at  the  University  of  Paris,  called 
“Prince  of  Thomists.” 

In  the  last  quarter  of  the  thirteenth  century  Ray¬ 
mond  Martin  wrote  his  scholarly  work  entitled, 
“The  Champion  of  the  Faith,”  against  the  errors  of 
Judaism.  Its  worth  is  in  no  small  measure  the  re¬ 
sult  of  the  author’s  extensive  and  first-hand  knowl¬ 
edge  of  rabbinic  literature.  It  is  generally  con¬ 
ceded  to  be  the  most  important  medieval  contribu¬ 
tion  to  the  literature  of  oriental  philosophy. 
Scarcely  a  half-century  later  Riccoldo  di  Monte 
Croce,  a  missionary  in  the  East,  composed  his  “De¬ 
fence  of  the  Faith”  against  the  teachings  of  the 
Koran.  It  is  based  entirely  upon  Arabian  literature. 
Luther  thought  well  enough  of  it  to  translate  it  into 
German  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  fidelity  of  the  children  of  St.  Dominic  to  the 
Holy  See  and  the  intrepid  defence  of  its  rights  is 
proverbial  throughout  the  Church.  Was  it  not  their 
devotion  to  the  Spouse  of  Christ,  and  the  Faith  of 
which  she  is  the  divinely  appointed  depository, 
which  won  for  them  the  sobriquet  “watch  dogs  of 
the  Lord,”  by  which  they  soon  became  known 
throughout  the  Church?  Few  among  them  better 
deserved  this  honorable  title  than  John  Torquemada. 
A  man  of  vast  erudition  and  great  intellect,  his  best 
efforts  were  given  to  an  uncompromising  defence 
of  the  teachings  of  the  Church  and  the  rights  of 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


145 


the  Holy  See.  Because  of  his  devotion  to  these 
interests  Eugenius  IV  conferred  upon  him  the  glori¬ 
ous  title,  less  worthily  borne  by  a  king  of  England, 
of  “Defender  of  the  Faith.”  He  must  not  be  con¬ 
founded  with  his  much  more  widely  known  nephew, 
Thomas  Torquemada,  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition. 

Luther’s  defiance  of  Rome  and  the  reign  of  re¬ 
ligious  anarchy  which  followed  it  made  it  impera¬ 
tively  necessary  for  the  loyal  children  of  the  Church 
to  rally  to  her  defence  in  this  her  sorest  hour  of 
need.  With  vigorous  rhetoric,  some  learning  and 
boundless  arrogance  the  arch-heretic  was  daily  re¬ 
jecting  the  doctrine  and  repudiating  the  authority  of 
the  Holy  See.  The  unreligious,  whose  passions  he 
unbridled,  whose  excesses  he  justified, whose  faith  he 
destroyed,  were  constantly  growing  in  numbers  be¬ 
hind  him.  It  was  urgently  necessary,  if  the  tide  of 
rebellion  was  to  be  stemmed,  that  the  ablest  of  the 
Church’s  sons  should  hasten  to  exert  their  best 
efforts  for  the  defence  of  the  Faith.  It  is  needless 
to  say  that  the  Friars  Preachers  were  among  the 
first  to  fling  themselves  into  the  conflict.  To  rhet¬ 
oric  they  opposed  reason  ;  to  the  errors  of  a  darkened 
intellect,  divine  Faith;  to  human  arrogance,  the  hu¬ 
mility  of  Christ.  Concerning  the  part  played  by  the 
Friars  Preachers  in  this  great  crisis  of  the  Church’s 
history  the  learned  historian,  Dr.  Paulus  of  Munich, 
has  written :  “It  may  well  be  said  that  in  the  diffi¬ 
cult  conflict  through  which  the  Catholic  Church  had 
to  pass  in  Germany  in  the  sixteenth  century,  no 
other  religious  order  furnished,  in  the  literary 
sphere,  so  many  champions,  or  so  well  equipped,  as 
the  Order  of  St.  Dominic.” 

The  first  of  the  Order  to  be  called  to  assume  a 
conspicuous  part  in  the  defence  of  the  Faith  was 


146 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Sylvester  Prierias.  By  command  of  Leo  X  he  an¬ 
swered  the  arguments  of  Luther;  and  most  effect¬ 
ively  did  the  Master  of  the  Sacred  Palace  accom¬ 
plish  his  task.  Tetzel  followed  with  his  learned 
theses,  written  in  German,  “On  Indulgences  and 
Grace.”  Later,  at  the  University  of  Frankfort  on 
the  Oder,  he  controverted  the  errors  of  Luther  in 
one  hundred  and  six  propositions  characterized  by 
sound  reasoning  and  great  erudition.  In  1518,  at 
the  same  university,  Tetzel  defended  the  papal 
power  in  fifty  propositions  dealing  with  that  subject. 

But  of  all  the  Dominican  opponents  of  Luther,  by 
far  the  most  illustrious,  and  the  one  the  most  feared 
by  him,  was  Thomas  de  Vio,  better  known  as  Car¬ 
dinal  Cajetan.  He  was  created  a  Master  of  Theology 
at  the  age  of  twenty-six  and  was  regarded  as  one 
of  the  most  learned  theologians  of  his  age.  Pope 
Leo  X,  who  placed  implicit  confidence  in  his  ability, 
appointed  him  papal  legate  to  receive  the  submis¬ 
sion  of  Luther  at  Augsburg.  His  wonderful  com¬ 
mentary  on  the  Summa  Theologica  of  St.  Thomas 
merited  for  him  the  title  of  “Prince  of  Commen¬ 
tators.” 

The  opening  year  of  the  sixteenth  century  marked 
the  beginning  of  the  Spanish-Dominican  school  of 
theologians  and  writers,  which  included  some  of  the 
ablest  scholars  of  the  Order.  Among  them  were 
Francis  of  Vittoria,  the  teacher  of  Cano,  Medina  and 
Soto,  who  more  than  any  other  man  of  his  times  in¬ 
fluenced  theological  teaching  in  the  universities  of 
Spain ;  Dominic  Soto,  chief  professor  of  theology 
at  the  University  of  Salamanca  and  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  theologians  at  the  Council  of  Trent; 
Melchior  Cano,  the  celebrated  author  of  the  classic 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


147 


work,  “Concerning  Theological  Sources”*  and  the 
creator  of  the  modern  school  of  apologetics ;  Bar- 
tolome  de  Medina,  whose  name  is  inseparably  associ¬ 
ated  with  the  system  of  Probabilism ;  and  Dominic 
Banez,  the  spiritual  director  of  St.  Theresa,  whose 
commentary  on  the  Summci  of  St.  Thomas  entitles 
him  to  a  place  among  the  greatest  theologians  of 
his  times.  In  the  following  century  the  succession 
of  illustrious  Dominican  theologians  was  continued 
in  the  land  of  St.  Dominic’s  nativity.  The  contro¬ 
versy  between  the  Jesuits  and  the  Dominicans  on 
the  relations  of  free  will  and  grace  revealed  in 
heroic  stature  more  than  one  of  the  Dominican 
champions  of  Thomism.  Thomas  de  Lemos  was  the 
learned  opponent  of  the  system  of  Molina  before  the 
illustrious  congregation  ( de  Auxiliis )  which  sat  in 
judgment  upon  the  controversy  at  Rome.  But  pre¬ 
vious  to  his  appearance  before  the  council  the  cause 
of  Thomistic  theology,  in  relation  to  the  subject  of 
the  dispute,  had  been  learnedly  and  valiantly  de¬ 
fended  for  three  years  by  his  confrere,  Diego 
Alvarez.  John  of  St.  Thomas  was  the  glory  of  the 
University  of  Alcala  and  the  light  of  the  Spanish 
Church  of  his  time. 

The  opening  of  the  Council  of  Trent  offered  yet 
another  opportunity  to  the  Friars  Preachers  to  place 
their  valuable  services  at  the  disposal  of  the  Church, 
an  offer  of  which  the  Holy  See  was  not  slow  to  take 
advantage.  In  all,  over  fifty  members  of  the  Order 
were  present  at  its  sessions.  Dominic  Soto  was 
present  as  personal  representative  of  Charles  V  and 

♦Cardinal  Manning  said  that  it  was  to  this  work  of 
Cano,  more  than  to  any  other  book,  that  he  owred  his  con¬ 
version. 


148 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


at  the  head  of  all  the  theologians  sent  to  the  council 
by  his  Imperial  Majesty.  In  the  first  six  ses¬ 
sions  of  the  council  he  also  represented  the  Master 
General  of  the  Order.  Barthelemy  de  Spina  was 
another  Dominican  who  took  a  conspicuous  part  in 
the  deliberations  of  the  council.  Leonard  Marinis, 
Archbishop  of  Lanciano,  was  present  as  papal  leg¬ 
ate,  and  subsequently,  in  company  with  two  other 
members  of  the  Order,  Giles  Foscarari  and  Francis 
Forerio,  was  chosen  to  draw  up  what  was  to  be 
known  as  the  “Catechism  of  the  Council  of  Trent.” 
If  the  Angel  of  the  Schools  was  not  present  in  the 
flesh  he  was  there  in  spirit,  for  his  immortal 
Summa  reposed  by  the  side  of  the  Bible  on  a  table 
in  the  chamber  of  the  council.  His  teaching  dom¬ 
inated  in  a  very  large  measure  the  discussions  and 
the  decisions  of  the  council.  Indeed,  more  than  one 
of  the  Tridentine  decrees  is  couched  in  almost  the 
very  words  of  St.  Thomas,  a  fact  due  no  doubt  to 
the  presence  of  Dominic  Soto,  who  with  others  was 
deputed  to  formulate  the  dogmatic  decrees  of  the 
council.  To  such  an  extent  did  the  teaching  of  the 
Thomists  permeate  the  deliberations  of  the  council 
that  in  1593,  when  Clement  III  expressed  the  wish 
that  the  Jesuits  should  follow  the  theological  sys¬ 
tem  of  St.  Thomas,  he  could  point  out  that  this 
great  council  had  approved  and  accepted  his  works. 

Scriptural 

The  two  studies  which  were  most  generally  fol¬ 
lowed  in  the  Middle  Ages  were  Scripture  and  the- 
ology.  In  the  curriculum  of  the  Order  they  held 
places  of  equal  honor.  The  study  and  teaching  of 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


149 


the  Scriptures  were  entered  upon  with  enthusiasm 
from  the  very  beginning  of  the  Institute.  Each 
Dominican  had  to  have  at  least  three  books  —  a 
Bible,  the  Sentences  of  Peter  Lombard  and  an  ec¬ 
clesiastical  history.  In  the  light  of  their  preaching 
vocation  it  was  necessary  that  they  be  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  contents  of  the  sacred  pages.  The 
unlettered  populace  might  not  be  able  to  grasp  a 
theological  argument,  set  forth  with  scholastic  pre¬ 
cision  and  formality,  but  it  could  always  catch  the 
meaning  of  the  scriptural  texts  profusely  employed 
to  illustrate  the  preacher’s  discourse.  The  simple 
language,  the  familiar  examples  and  the  inspiring 
truths  of  the  Scriptures  were  fully  within  the  scope 
of  their  understanding.  Consequently,  whatever 
might  make  the  contents  of  the  sacred  pages  more 
available  to  the  preacher,  and  the  accuracy  of  the 
text  more  reliable,  was  to  the  Dominicans  a  matter 
of  vital  importance.  It  was  with  this  end  in  view 
that  the  general  chapter  held  in  Paris  in  1236  or¬ 
dered  that  a  “concordance”  of  the  entire  Bible  be 
prepared  by  members  of  the  Order.  This  “concord¬ 
ance”  was  a  dictionary  of  the  Bible,  with  all  the 
words  of  the  sacred  text  arranged  in  alphabetical 
order  and  accompanied  by  references  indicating  the 
book,  chapter  and  verse  in  which  they  would  be 
found.  A  work  of  this  kind  had  been  attempted  be¬ 
fore  the  Friars  Preachers  undertook  it,  but  it  had 
met  with  but  a  scant  measure  of  success.  To  Hugh 
of  St.  Cher,  afterwards  the  first  cardinal  of  the  Or¬ 
der,  who  edified  all  France  by  his  piety,  as  he  aston¬ 
ished  it  with  his  learning,  was  intrusted  this  im¬ 
portant  work,  and  under  his  direction  it  was  brought 
to  a  completely  successful  issue  by  the  brethren  at 


150 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Paris  in  the  famous  convent  of  St.  James.  Under 
the  title  of  “The  English  Concordance”  it  was  am¬ 
plified  in  1276  by  the  English  Dominicans,  Richard 
of  Stavensby  and  Hugh  of  Croydon,  under  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  John  of  Darlington.  In  this  work  not  only 
was  each  word  given,  but  the  entire  phrase  in  which 
it  occurred. 

In  the  absence  of  the  art  of  printing  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  was  necessary  for  the  multiplication  of 
copies  of  the  Bible  to  resort  to  the  laborious  efforts 
of  the  copyists,  who  reproduced,  letter  by  letter,  the 
entire  contents  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  But  as 
even  Homer  nodded,  it  was  only  natural  that  from 
time  to  time,  by  the  inadvertence  of  these  devoted 
monks,  errors  should  creep  into  the  pages  of  the  vol¬ 
umes  on  which  they  labored.  When  detected,  these 
inaccuracies  were  noted  in  the  margin  of  the  text. 
After  a  while  they  became  so  numerous  that  it  be¬ 
came  necessary  to  embody  them  in  a  separate  vol¬ 
ume  called  a  “correctory.” 

In  1236  the  Friars  Preachers  brought  to  a  success¬ 
ful  conclusion  the  task  of  revising  the  entire  Vul¬ 
gate  text  of  the  Bible,  embodying  all  their  amend¬ 
ments  in  the  first  Dominican  correctory.  This  tre¬ 
mendous  task  was  accomplished,  like  the  work  of 
the  concordance,  by  the  community  of  St.  James, 
under  the  direction  of  Hugh  of  St.  Cher,  then  a  pro¬ 
fessor  of  the  University  of  Paris.  The  collation 
with  the  Hebrew  text  was  accomplished,  by  the 
subprior  of  St.  James,  Theobald  of  Saxonia,  a  con¬ 
verted  Jew.  This  was  the  first  corrected  copy  of 
the  Scriptures  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  general 
chapter  of  1236  commanded  that  all  the  Bibles  of  the 
Order  be  corrected  according  to  this  exemplar. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


151 


Eight  of  the  manuscripts  of  Hugh  of  St.  Cher  in  con¬ 
nection  with  this  work  are  still  extant.  Two  other 
correctories  were  produced  within  the  following 
thirty-one  years.  The  Bible  on  which  the  Univer¬ 
sity  of  Paris  based  its  lectures  was  a  particular 
Alcunian  text  of  the  Vulgate.  The  great  vogue 
which  this  Bible  enjoyed  for  so  long  a  time  was  due 
to  its  divisions  into  chapters  by  Hugh  of  St.  Cher. 
To  his  prodigious  industry  was  also  mainly  due  the 
Bible  of  Sens. 

When  we  consider  the  difficulties  under  which 
these  scriptural  scholars  labored — the  scarcity  of 
books,  the  absence  of  archaeological  studies  and  the 
related  sciences,  the  lack  of  data  which  is  now 
within  the  reach  of  every  student  of  the  Bible — we 
are  able  to  form  some  idea  of  the  vast  industry, 
varied  learning,  profound  study  and  tireless  re¬ 
search  necessary  for  these  and  the  subsequent  con¬ 
tributions  to  Dominican  biblical  literature. 

In  the  immensely  important  work  of  translating 
the  Bible  into  the  vernacular  of  the  different  coun¬ 
tries  of  Europe  the  Order  of  St.  Dominic  played  an 
especially  creditable  part.  Theirs  were  the  first 
translations  into  the  vulgar  tongues  of  many  of  these 
nations.  The  Dominican  James  of  Voragine,  Arch¬ 
bishop  of  Genoa,  was  the  first  to  translate  the  Bible 
into  Italian.  This  translation  appeared  about  1260. 
So  great  was  the  zeal  for  souls  of  the  first  mission¬ 
aries  of  the  Order  that  Blessed  Bartolommeo  Parvi, 
of  Bologna,  missionary  bishop  in  Armenia,  did  not 
hesitate  to  undertake  amidst  his  arduous  apostolic 
labors  to  translate  the  Bible  into  Armenian.  This 
he  successfully  accomplished  about  1330.  Augus¬ 
tine  Gustiniani,  who  introduced  the  cultivation  of 


152 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


oriental  tongues  into  the  University  of  Paris,  trans¬ 
lated  the  Psalter  into  five  languages.  The  Domin¬ 
icans,  Jean  de  Sy,  Jehan  Nicholas,  William  Vivien 
and  Jehan  de  Chambly,  were  the  principal  authors 
of  the  manuscript  Bible  of  King  John  the  Good, 
which  was  begun  in  the  second  half  of  the  four¬ 
teenth  century.  Though  never  finished,  it  has  been 
described  by  competent  authority  as  “a  work  of 
science  and  good  taste.”  Notwithstanding  the  oft- 
repeated  assertion  of  Protestants  that  Luther  first 
gave  the  Bible  to  the  people  in  their  native  tongue, 
the  first  translation  of  the  Bible  into  German  was 
made  by  John  Rellach  of  the  Order  of  Preachers. 
On  the  strength  of  a  Nuremberg  manuscript,  Jostes 
established  the  fact  that  this  translation  appeared 
before  1450 — thirty-three  years  before  Luther  was 
born.  A  complete  manuscript  version  of  the  Bible 
in  Italian  was  made  by  the  Dominican  Nicholas  de 
Nardo  in  1472,  and  is  now  preserved  in  the  National 
Library  in  Paris.  For  the  benefit  of  the  Hungarians, 
John  Sylvester  translated  the  Scriptures  into 
their  vernacular  in  1541.  Members  of  the  Order 
also  translated  the  Bible  into  Catalonian,  Valencian 
and  Castilian.  An  interlinear  version  from  the  orig¬ 
inal  languages  was  made  in  the  first  half  of  the  six¬ 
teenth  century  by  the  famous  Dominican  scriptural 
scholar,  Xantes  Pagninus.  Its  literal  fidelity  to  the 
originals  made  it  acceptable  even  to  Jews  and  Re¬ 
formers.  A  similar  translation  was  begun  by 
Thomas  Malvenda,  who  died  in  1628  before  he  had 
finished  the  Book  of  Ezechiel.  A  notable  transla¬ 
tion  of  the  New  Testament  was  made  in  1542  by 
the  Italian  Dominican,  Zaccaria  Florentini.  An¬ 
other  German  version  that  ante-dated  that  of 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


153 


Luther — this  time  by  eighteen  years — was  that  pub¬ 
lished  at  Mainz  in  1534  by  John  Dietenberger.  He 
was  the  second  Dominican  to  anticipate  Luther’s 
so-called  and  much-lauded  unlocking  of  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  in  the  interests  of  the  German  people.  Fifty- 
eight  editions  of  this  version  had  been  published  by 
1776.  One  of  the  three  collaborators  who  gave  to 
the  Catholics  of  Holland  their  first  authoritative 
Dutch  Bible  was  the  Dominican,  Godevaert  Stryode. 
This  version  was  revised  after  it  had  gone  through 
seventeen  complete  editions.  It  first  appeared  in 
1545.  In  1547  John  Henton  brought  out  at  Lou¬ 
vain  a  corrected  text  of  the  Vulgate,  with  vari¬ 
ants,  which  met  with  a  favorable  reception  and  was 
subsequently  republished  at  Antwerp  in  1583. 

Two  of  the  most  interesting  contributions  by 
Dominicans  to  Bible  literature  are  of  our  own  times. 
To  offset  the  influence  of  a  mutilated  reprint  of  the 
Arabic  Bible  circulated  by  the  Protestant  Bible  So¬ 
ciety,  the  Dominican  Fathers  at  Mosul,  in  Mesopo¬ 
tamia,  issued  from  their  own  press  in  1878,  a  com¬ 
plete  Arabic  version  of  the  Bible.  The  other  is  a 
publication  by  the  Fathers  of  the  same  place  of  the 
Syriac  version  of  the  Bible  issued  from  the  Domini¬ 
can  printing-press  at  Mosul.  This  is  the  version 
known  since  the  ninth  century  as  the  “Simple”  or 
“Peschitto.”  It  dates  back  to  the  second  century. 
The  publication  of  this  new  edition  was  superin¬ 
tended  by  Mgr.  Henry  Altmayer,  the  Dominican 
Apostolic  Delegate.  The  Patriarch  of  the  Babylon¬ 
ians,  Mgr.  Abolynam,  hg.s  approved  this  edition  and 
ordered  its  use  in  his  provinces.  The  foregoing, 
though  the  most  important,  are  by  no  means  all  the 
translations  of  the  Bible  which  owe  their  existence 


154 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


to  the  industry  of  scriptural  scholars  of  the  Order. 
The  lack  of  space  forbids  a  longer  list. 

But  it  was  not  merely  in  the  field  of  revision, 
translation  and  concordances  that  the  Friars 
Preachers  prosecuted  their  scriptural  labors.  They 
achieved  even  greater  renown  in  the  work  of  bib¬ 
lical  commentaries.  To  Hugh  of  St.  Cher,  that 
prodigy  of  scriptural  scholarship,  must  be  accorded 
the  credit  of  giving  to  the  Church  the  first  complete 
commentary  on  the  Scriptures.  This  enormous 
work  fills  eight  folio  volumes.  The  lectures  deliv¬ 
ered  in  the  Dominican  schools  by  Albertus  Magnus 
and  St.  Thomas  were  afterwards  put  into  perma¬ 
nent  form  and  now  constitute  the  biblical  commen¬ 
taries  of  those  two  giant  intellects.  The  “Golden 
Chain”  of  St.  Thomas  was  an  exposition  of  the  four 
Gospels  written  for  the  benefit  of  clerics.  It  was 
made  up  of  excerpts  from  the  Fathers  so  arranged 
as  to  constitute  a  continuous  commentary  on  the 
text.  In  1845  Cardinal  Newman  finished  its  trans¬ 
lation  into  English.  What  St.  Thomas  did  for  the 
four  Gospels,  Nicholas  of  Trevet  accomplished  with 
regard  to  the  entire  Bible.  In  the  sixteenth  century 
a  large  number  of  Catholic  scholars  were  engaged 
in  correcting  the  New  Testament  of  the  Vulgate  by 
the  Greek.  Conspicuous  among  them  were  the  Do¬ 
minicans,  Cardinal  Cajetan  and  Santes  Pagninus. 
It  was  the  solid  and  brilliant  scholarship  of  these, 
and  a  host  of  other  Bible  scholars  who  followed 
them,  that  led  Vercellone  to  pay  the  Order  the  fol¬ 
lowing  compliment :  “To  the  Dominican  Order  be¬ 
longs  the  glory  of  having  first  renewed  in  the 
Church  the  illustrious  example  of  Origen  and  St. 
Augustine  by  the  ardent  cultivation  of  sacred 
criticism.” 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


155 


The  contributions  of  the  Order  to  the  cognate 
branches  of  Bible  science  were  of  the  most  sub¬ 
stantial  character,  and  in  many  of  these  studies  Do¬ 
minicans  were  pioneers.  Thus,  Sixtus  of  Sienna, 
a  converted  Jew,  in  the  sixteenth  century  created 
in  his  Bibliotheca  Sancta  the  department  of  introduc¬ 
tion  to  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  To  Riccoldo  da 
Montecroce  must  be  accorded  the  credit  of  having 
introduced  in  his  Itinerarium  the  study  of  Bible  eth¬ 
nology  ;  and  Biblical  archaeology  owes  much  to 
Raymond  Martin, the  founder  of  biblical  orientalism. 

That  the  ancient  love  of  scriptural  study  has  by 
no  means  diminished  within  the  Order  is  witnessed 
by  the  famous  biblical  school  conducted  by  the  Do¬ 
minicans  at  Jerusalem.  From  the  time  of  its  foun¬ 
dation,  some  twenty-six  years  ago,  it  has  been  the 
foremost  institution  of  its  kind  in  the  Church.  Its 
comprehensive  curriculum  embraces  every  depart¬ 
ment  of  science  pertaining  to  the  study  of  the  Bible 
— Semitic  languages,  Greek,  epigraphy,  topography 
of  Jerusalem,  geography  of  the  Holy  Land  and  the 
other  biblical  countries,  history,  introduction,  exe¬ 
gesis  and  many  other  cognate  branches.  The  aca¬ 
demic  studies  are  supplemented  by  archaeological 
journeys  around  the  Holy  City  and  by  expeditions 
across  the  hills  and  deserts  of  Palestine. 

The  wide-spread  fame  of  its  professors  is  based 
not  merely  upon  the  enthusiastic  admiration  of 
their  students,  but  upon  the  many  original  and 
scholarly  works  with  which  they  have  challenged 
the  attention  of  the  learned  world  and  compelled  its 
applause.  Chief  of  this  distinguished  body  is 
Father  Lagrange.  Among  his  most  celebrated 
works  are  La  Methode  Historique ;  La  Messianisme  chez 


156 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


ks  Juifs ;  Etudes  sur  les  Religions  Semitiques :  Com¬ 
mentary  on  Judges.  These  with  his  commentary 
on  St.  Mark  prove  how  familiar  he  is  with  the 
problems  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  The 
latter  is  considered  one  of  the  best  commen¬ 
taries  on  the  second  Gospel  and  a  complete 
refutation  of  the  heretical  doctrines  of  Loisy. 
Pere  Dhorme  is  known  among  biblical  schol¬ 
ars  throughout  the  world,  not  only  for  his 
commentary  on  the  Books  of  Samuel,  but  for  his 
constantly  growing  reputation  as  an  Assyriologist. 
Pere  Vincent  is  the  archaeologist  of  the  faculty.  His 
work  on  Canaan  has  already  assumed  the  character 
of  a  classic.  For  twenty  years  he  gathered  matter 
for  a  history  of  Jerusalem,  in  the  writing  of  which 
he  collaborated  with  Pere  Abel.  These  and  others 
of  the  faculty  at  Jerusalem  have  given  to  the  school 
at  that  place  a  position  of  unrivalled  honor  in  the 
Church.  We  shall  close  the  consideration  of  this 
subject  by  pointing  out  that  when,  in  1901,  Pope 
Leo  XIII  founded  the  famous  Biblical  Commission 
at  Rome,  he  included  in  its  membership  four  well- 
known  Dominican  scholars  —  Fathers  Esser,  La¬ 
grange,  Lepidi  and  Scheil. 

Canon  Law 

In  the  person  of  Raymond  of  Pennafort  the  Order 
gave  to  the  Church  one  of  its  greatest  canonists. 
At  the  request  of  Gregory  IX  he  gathered  together 
in  one  work  all  the  decrees  of  the  Roman  councils, 
scattered  through  various  documents  and  letters. 
He  supplied  the  decretals  omitted  by  the  Benedic¬ 
tine  monk,  Gratian,  and  edited  those  given  out  after 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


157 


the  time  of  that  indefatigable  compiler.  These  he 
published  in  1234.  So  accurately  was  this  great 
work  compiled  that  not  only  the  individual  docu¬ 
ments  contained  therein,  but  the  compilation  itself, 
has  been  recognized  as  authoritative  by  all  the  pon¬ 
tiffs  from  Gregory  IX  to  the  present  incumbent  of 
the  Holy  See.  By  pontifical  decree  it  became  the 
official  text-book  on  canon  law  at  the  universities 
of  Paris  and  Bologna,  and  finally  supplanted  com¬ 
pletely  the  work  of  Gratian.  The  collection  has  the 
same  force  of  law  to-day  that  it  had  almost  seven 
hundred  years  ago.  This  encyclopedic  work,  as  the 
result  of  the  author’s  tireless  industry,  was  com¬ 
pleted  in  three  years,  and  immediately  acquired 
such  enduring  fame  that  to-day  it  is  known  simply 
as  “The  Decretals.”  It  was  the  last  complete  sum¬ 
mary  of  ecclesiastical  legislation. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  thirteenth  century  Martin 
of  Troppan,  Bishop  of  Gnesen,  and  Martin  of  Fano 
Mayor  of  Genoa  before  his  entrance  into  the  Order 
were  among  the  famous  canonists  .of  their  day. 
Nicholas  of  Ennezat,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
in  the  sixteenth,  John  Dominic  and  John  Torque- 
mada,  were  ranked  by  their  contemporaries  among 
the  foremost  canonists  of  the  age  in  which  they 
lived. 

The  two  standard  works  of  the  Middle  Ages  deal¬ 
ing  with  laws  governing  the  Inquisition  were, 
Direct  or  ium  1  nquisitionis  hereticae  pravitatis  and  the 
Dircctorium  Inquisitorum.  The  former  was  the  work 
of  Bernard  Guidonis,  and  the  latter  of  Nicholas 
Eymerich,  both  of  the  Order  of  St.  Dominic. 


158 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Languages 

The  universal  character  of  the  preaching  apo- 
stolate  which  constituted  the  vocation  of  the  Do¬ 
minicans  made  it  mandatory  for  them  to  acquire 
the  widest  possible  familiarity  with  languages. 
Their  mission  in  the  Church  was  neither  local,  nor 
national,  nor  continental,  but  universal  —  catholic. 
To  participate  in  the  true  spirit  of  their  Order  the 
Friars  Preachers  must  not  look  forward  to  a  life¬ 
long  apostolate  in  their  native  land.  Like  the  Apos¬ 
tles,  to  whom  the  Lord  said,  “Go  ye  into  the  whole 
world  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  every  creature," 
they  must  be  prepared  to  be  assigned  to  any  quarter 
of  the  world  or  to  any  people  on  the  earth  for  their 
life’s  labor.  It  was  necessary,  therefore,  for  the 
greater  efficiency  and  scope  of  their  labor  that  they 
should  be,  as  a  body,  familiar  with  every  language 
spoken  by  the  tongues  of  men. 

It  was  accordingly  decreed  by  the  Most  General 
Chapter  in  1236  that  in  all  convents  the  language  of 
the  neighboring  countries  should  be  studied.  In 
this  manner  each  member  of  the  Institute  was  en¬ 
abled  to  extend  his  apostolate  beyond  the  confines 
of  his  native  land,  and  so  participate  in  the  universal 
spirit  of  the  Order. 

But  a  European  apostolate  was  not  the  idea  of 
universality  which  St.  Dominic  had  conceived  for 
his  Institute.  It  was  to  be  truly  a  world  power,  in 
a  spiritual  sense.  The  truths  of  Christianity  were 
to  be  proclaimed  and  defended  not  only  in  France, 
Poland,  Russia  and  Sweden,  but  in  Palestine,  Arabia 
and  the  farthest  Orient. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


159 


The  study  of  oriental  languages  was,  moreover, 
cognate  to  the  study  of  theology  and  philosophy, 
since  many  of  the  writings  of  Aristotle  and  other 
philosophers  were  accessible  only  through  transla¬ 
tions  from  the  Hebrew  and  the  Arabic.  These  two 
languages  constituted  the  serviceable  medium  for 
the  introduction  into  Europe  of  more  than  one  her¬ 
esy.  Aristotle’s  brilliant  reasoning  came  forth  with 
halting  step  from  the  miserable  versions  of  Aver- 
roes  and  Avicenna,  who  corrupted  it  to  bolster  up 
their  own  peculiar  systems.  In  order,  therefore,  the 
more  effectively  to  refute  these  and  other  Eastern 
commentators  the  Arabic  and  Hebrew  languages 
were  immediately  taken  up  and  given  a  permanent 
place  in  the  Dominican  curriculum. 

The  General  Chapter  of  1310  commanded  the 
Master  General  to  establish  in  several  provinces 
schools  for  the  study  of  Hebrew,  Greek  and  Arabic, 
to  which  each  province  of  the  Order  should  send  at 
least  one  student.  But  long  before  this  law  was  en¬ 
acted  the  study  of  foreign  languages  had  been  pro¬ 
vided  for  by  individual  provincials  and  priors.  This 
was  especially  true  of  superiors  in  whose  territory 
many  Orientals  dwelt. 

It  was,  of  course,  necessary  for  the  Dominican 
professors  at  the  University  of  Paris  to  be  familiar 
with  Arabic  for  the  purpose  of  combating  the  teach¬ 
ings  of  Averroes  and  Avicenna,  which  were  begin¬ 
ning  to  exercise  an  unwholesome  influence  upon  the 
thought  of  the  times.  To  counteract  the  growing 
power  of  the  Tews  in  Spain  a  knowlege  of  Hebrew 
was  not  less  imperative.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
Order  the  Friars  Preachers  recognized  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  acquiring  these  languages.  Consequently, 


160  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 

\  . 
i 

when  Augustino  Gustiniani,  a  versatile  linguist  as 
well  as  a  profound  scripturist,  appeared  at  Paris  he 
was  able  to  accept  the  invitation  to  inaugurate  a 
course  of  public  lectures  in  Hebrew  at  the  univer¬ 
sity.  So  familiar  were  the  members  of  the  Order 
in  the  first  part  of  the  century  with  the  Hebrew 
language  that  on  their  appearance  at  the  University 
of  Oxford  they  were  assigned  a  place  for  their  con¬ 
vent  in  the  Ghetto,  that  they  might  labor  the  more 
effectively  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews.  So  pro¬ 
ficient  in  the  use  of  these  languages  did  they  be¬ 
come  that  in  1237  Father  Phillippe,  Provincial  of 
the  Holy  Land,  could  write  to  Gregory  IX  to  inform 
him  that  his  religious  had  preached  to  the  people  in 
the  different  languages  of  the  Orient,  especially  in 
Arabic.  About  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century 
St.  Raymond  Pennafort,  third  Master  General  of 
the  Order,  established  schools  of  oriental  languages 
at  Tunis  and  Barcelona.  A  school  of  Arabic  was 
established  at  Tunis  about  the  middle  of  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century;  at  Barcelona,  another,  in  1259;  yet 
another  at  Murcia  in  1267 ;  in  1281  one  at  Valencia. 
The  same  province  established  schools  for  the  study 
of  Hebrew  at  Barcelona  in  1281  and  at  Jativa  in 
1291.  The  purpose  of  these  schools  was  to  combat 
the  increasing  aggressiveness  of  the  Jews  and  Mo¬ 
hammedans,  who  constituted  a  very  large,  powerful 
and  hostile  element  of  the  population  of  Spain. 
Twenty  of  the  brethren  conversant  with  Hebrew 
and  Arabic  were  sent  to  these  colleges  to  write  and 
preach  against  the  errors  of  the  unbelievers.  It  was 
for  this  reason,  too,  that  at  the  request  of  St.  Ray¬ 
mond  St.  Thomas  wrote  his  magnificent  philosophi¬ 
cal  summa,  Contra  Gentiles. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


161 


Raymond  Martin  was  the  most  illustrious  product 
of  the  schools  founded  by  St.  Raymond  for  the 
study  of  oriental  languages.  This  famous  champion 
of  the  Faith  could  speak  and  write  fluently  Hebrew, 
Chaldaic  and  Arabic.  He  composed  a  work  in 
Arabic  against  the  Koran,  and  another  in  Hebrew 
against  the  Talmud.  These  works  remain  to  this 
day  astounding  monuments  of  the  varied  erudition 
of  the  thirteenth  century.  Clement  VIII  generously 
expressed  his  appreciation  of  the  work  done  by  the 
Dominicans  in  the  study  of  oriental  languages  when 
he  said  that  by  the  introduction  of  Hebrew  and 
Arabic  learning  St.  Raymond  had  contributed  to 
the  glory  of  both  Spain  and  the  Church,  and  had 
been  the  cause  of  the  conversion  of  over  ten  thou¬ 
sand  of  the  infidels,  many  of  them  among  the  most 
learned  of  their  kind. 

In  the  study  of  Greek  the  Order  took  even  a 
greater  interest.  Shortly  after  the  death  of  St. 
Dominic  familiarity  with  this  language  was  wide¬ 
spread  among  the  Dominicans.  Every  year  a  num¬ 
ber  of  young  men  were  sent  to  Greece  to  perfect 
themselves  in  the  language  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 
Though  not  a  consummate  Hellenist,  in  the  sense 
of  the  Humanists,  St.  Thomas  possessed  an  excel¬ 
lent  working  knowledge  of  the  Greek  language.  In 
the  Catena  Aurea,  alone,  he  cites  the  opinions  of 
sixty  Greek  writers.  In  the  Suntma  he  cites  twenty 
ecclesiastical  and  about  the  same  number  of  secular 
Greek  authors,  including  Heraclitus  and  Aristopha¬ 
nes.  His  commentary  on  De  Interpretations  offers 
some  criticisms  on  the  Greek  text. 

William  of  Brabant,  sometimes  called  William  of 
Xloerbeke,  was  one  of  the  young  Dominicans  sent 


162 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


to  Greece  to  study  the  classic  language  of  that  coun¬ 
try.  On  his  return,  in  1268,  he  was  made  chaplain 
to  Clement  IV,  and  afterward  to  Gregory  X.  He 
was  also  appointed  Greek  secretary  at  the  Council 
of  Lyons  in  1274.  At  this  Council  he  was  one  of 
those  who  chanted  the  Nicene  Creed  in  Greek, 
thrice  repeating  the  words  Qui  ex  Patre  Filioque 
p-rocedit,  contested  by  the  Greek  Church. 

At  the  instance  of  St.  Thomas,  William  of 
Brabant  produced,  in  1273,  a  literal  Latin  transla¬ 
tion  of  the  Greek  text  of  all  the  works  of  Aristotle. 
After  this  it  was  possible  to  study  Aristotle  without 
having  recourse  to  the  corrupted  translations  from 
the  Arabic,  which  soon  fell  into  desuetude.  He  was 
made  Archbishop  of  Corinth  in  1277,  but  continued 
to  translate  from  the  Greek  into  Latin.  Besides 
Aristotle,  he  rendered  into  Latin  Simplicius,  Pro- 
clus,  Ammonius,  Hippocrates  and  Gallen. 

Thomas  of  Cantimpre,  who  entered  the  Order  in 
1232,  also  acquired  great  renown  as  a  translator 
from  the  Greek.  He  rendered  into  Latin  most  of 
Aristotle’s  works  on  morals. 

Geoffrey  of  Waterford  translated  the  Physio- 
gtwmica  and  De  Reginiine  Prvncipum  of  Aristotle  from 
the  original  Greek. 

Literature 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  about  the  literary 
activities  of  the  Friars  Preachers,  especially  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  is  that,  besides  their  original  and  cre¬ 
ative  works,  they  were  constantly  summing  up  in 
encyclopedic  form  the  world’s  knowledge  in  general, 
as  well  as  on  individual  subjects.  As  the  Domin¬ 
icans  corrected  the  entire  Vulgate  version  of  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


163 


Bible,  codified  the  entire  body  of  canon  law,  and 
wove  the  whole  fabric  of  Christian  theology  and  phi¬ 
losophy  into  a  synthetic  and  harmonious  work  of 
moral  science,  they  may  justly  lay  claim  to  the 
credit  of  summing  up  all  the  existing  knowledge  of 
Christendom.  Such  was  the  stupendous  work  of 
Albertus  Magnus,  covering  almost  every  subject 
that  had  engaged  the  attention  of  the  human  intel¬ 
lect.  Such,  also  was  the  Summa  Theologica  of  St. 
Thomas,  in  which  every  subject  related  directly  or 
indirectly  to  theology  was  examined  and  elucidated. 
As  we  have  already  given  some  consideration  to 
these  works  under  other  titles  we  shall  immediately 
enter  upon  the  consideration  of  one  of  the  greatest 
works  producd  by  the  human  intellect  in  any  age  of 
the  world’s  history.  This  is  “The  Greater  Mirror” 
of  that  intellectual  giant  of  the  thirteenth  century — 
for  there  were  giants  in  those  days — Vincent  of 
Beauvais.  Albert  the  Great,  St.  Thomas  and  Vin¬ 
cent  of  Beauvais  constitute  a  triology  of  intellects 
such  as  is  rarely  found  in  the  entire  history  of  an 
Order,  not  to  speak  of  a  single  decade.  Vincent  was 
without  doubt  one  of  the  greatest  encyclopedists 
who  have  thus  far  attempted  the  task  of  summing 
up  the  world’s  knowledge.  He  conceived  and  exe¬ 
cuted  the  heroic  design  of  writing  a  work  which 
would  be  a  temple  consecrated  to  the  custody  of  uni¬ 
versal  knowlege.  This  work,  one  of  the  most  re¬ 
markable  contributions  to  general  literature  in  any 
age,  he  realized  in  his  encyclopedia  called  “The 
Greater  Mirror.”  In  this  tremendous  work  he  com¬ 
piled  the  then  sum  of  the  world’s  knowledge  under 
the  heads  of  “Nature, “  “Morals,”  “Doctrine”  and 


164 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


“History,”  adding  his  own  luminous  commentaries 
and  special  treatises. 

Under  the  head  of  “Nature/’  he  deals,  following 
the  order  recorded  in  Genesis,  with  the  whole  work 
of  creation — the  heavens,  the  earth,  the  natural 
kingdoms,  and  the  corporeal  and  mental  make-up 
of  man.  This  part  is  contained  in  a  folio  volume  of 
two  thousand  double-columned,  closely-printed 
pages  and  is  divided  into  thirty-two  books  contain¬ 
ing  four  thousand  chapters.  In  describing  this  won¬ 
derful  work  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  says:  “It 
was,  as  it  were,  the  great  triumph  of  medieval  sci¬ 
ence,  whose  floor  and  walls  are  inlaid  with  an  enor¬ 
mous  mosaic  of  skillfully  arranged  passages  from 
Latin,  Greek,  Arabic  and  even  Hebrew  authors.” 

The  second  part,  entitled  “Morals,”  is  contained  in 
two  folio  volumes,  and  treats  of  the  conclusions  of 
all  the  great  theologians  of  the  age.  Under  “Doc¬ 
trine”  he  writes  of  all  the  arts  and  sciences.  The 
historical  part  contains  a  history  of  the  world. 

In  this  marvelous  work,  which  has  served  for  the 
basis  of  even  modern  encyclopedias,  Vincent  re¬ 
views,  arranges,  and  compiles  all  extant  knowledge, 
sacred  and  profane,  Christian  and  pagan.  In  an  age 
in  which  books  were  so  scarce  and  so  costly,  we  can 
readily  understand  how  scholars  in  every  branch  of 
learning  journeyed  from  the  remotest  parts  of  Eu¬ 
rope  to  consult  “The  Greater  Mirror”  of  Vincent  of 
Beauvais. 

Dr.  Julius  Pagel,  in  his  treatise  on  “Medicine 
in  the  Middle  Ages”  asserts  that  Vincent  of  Beau¬ 
vais  must  be  considered  the  most  important  contrib¬ 
utor  to  the  generalization  of  scientific  knowledge, 
not  alone  in  the  thirteenth,  but  in  the  immediately 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


165 


succeeding  centuries.  With  true  scientific  spirit  he 
constantly  cites  the  authorities  from  whom  his  in¬ 
formation  is  derived.  He  cites  hundreds  of  authors 
and  there  is  scarcely  a  subject  he  does  not  touch  on. 

This  great  work  would  have  failed  of  accomplish¬ 
ment,  a  fact  to  which  Vincent  himself  bears  witness, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  splendid  and  harmonious  co¬ 
operation  of  his  Dominican  brethren  in  collecting 
material,  collating  references  and  verifying  quota¬ 
tions.  They  sank  their  own  ambitions  in  the  gen¬ 
eral  good,  and  found  ample  reward  in  the  service 
they  conferred  upon  the  cause  of  human  science. 
‘‘The  Greater  Mirror”  is  a  fair  example  of  the  earn¬ 
est  and  tireless  efforts  of  the  Friars  Preachers  for 
the  diffusion  of  knowledge  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages. 

Thomas  of  Cantimpre,  considered  by  Pagel,  the 
Protestant  author  just  quoted,  as  one  of  the  three 
most  popular  writers  of  the  thirteenth  century,  is 
another  Dominican  whose  writing  took  on  encyclo¬ 
pedic  proportions.  One  of  his  works,  “Concerning 
the  Nature  of  Things,”  contains  twenty  books  and 
required  fifteen  years  for  its  writing.  The  variety 
of  its  learning  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  it  treats, 
among  other  things,  of  anatomy,  animals,  birds, 
fishes,  serpents,  precious  stones  and  the  elements  of 
the  universe. 

We  have  already  considered  the  encyclopedic 
work  of  Raymond  of  Pennafort.  In  his  work,  “The 
Decretals,”  he  summarizes,  harmonizes,  condenses 
and  orders  the  laws  of  the  Church  for  over  twelve 
hundred  years.  It  may  be  truthfully  said,  therefore, 
that  these  great  master  minds  of  the  Order,  Hugh 
of  St.  Cher,  Albertus  Magnus,  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin, 


166 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Raymond  of  Pennafort,  Thomas  of  Cantimpre  and 
Vincent  of  Beauvais  summed  up  among  them  the 
contents  of  human  knowledge  and  made  it  easily 
available  for  all  who  sought  it. 

Another  member  of  the  Order  who,  though  now 
unheard  of  outside  the  circles  of  historians  and  bib¬ 
liophiles,  was  Hugh  Ripelin,  one  of  the  best  known 
writers  among  Dominican  theologians.  His  “Com¬ 
pendium  of  Theological  Truth”  was  the  most  widely 
used  and  most  famous  manual  of  theology  in  the 
Middle  Ages. 

In  his  century  St.  Antoninus  continued  amid  the 
exacting  duties  of  his  archiepiscopal  office  the  ency¬ 
clopedic  efforts  of  the  giants  of  the  previous  century. 
Not  only  did  he  practically  create  the  science  of 
modern  moral  theology  and  make  pioneer  contribu¬ 
tions  to  the  science  of  economics,  but  over  and 
above  all  these  absorbing  tasks  he  could  find  time 
to  write  the  first  complete  history  of  the  world. 
Over  a  century  before  St.  Antoninus  wrote  his  “Uni¬ 
versal  History”  his  brother  Dominicans  Ptolemy  of 
Lucca  and  Bernard  Guidonis,  were  regarded  as  the 
two  great  ecclesiastical  historians  of  the  early  four¬ 
teenth  century.  In  the  sixteenth  century  Bartholo¬ 
mew  de  Las  Casas  wrote  his  well-known  “History 
of  the  Indies” ;  while  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seven¬ 
teenth  century  Noel  Alexander  published  his  twen¬ 
ty-four-volume  history  of  the  New  Testament  and 
his  dissertations  on  the  history  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment. 

Though  St.  Thomas  had  never  given  to  the  world 
the  Sutntna  he  still  would  have  won  literary  immor¬ 
tality  by  virtue  of  the  Office  of  Corpus  Christi  which 
he  wrote  at  the  request  of  Pope  Urban  IV.  His 


* 


Dominican  House  of  Studies,  Washington, 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  167 

hymns  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament  have  been  for  over 
six  hundred  years  the  very  language  of  the  sanctu¬ 
ary.  Depth  of  thought,  felicity  of  expression,  grace¬ 
ful  energy,  epigrammatic  doctrine,  and  tender  piety 
are  in  evidence  in  every  line  of  the  Office  of  Corpus 
Christi.  The  hymns  of  St. Thomas,  touching  the  most 
sublime  subjects,  teaching  the  most  vital  truths, 
breathe  in  every  line  the  truest  and  purest  of  poetic 
sentiment  and  feeling.  Couched  in  an  exactness  of 
language  that  seems  almost  impossible  to  rival,  free 
from  ostentatious  adornment,  giving  poetic  expres¬ 
sion  to  the  deepest  of  divine  mysteries  in  that  epi¬ 
grammatic  style  to  which  the  Latin  is  so  well  adapt¬ 
ed,  it  is  almost  a  hopeless  task  to  attempt  to  render 
them  into  English.  Of  two  of  his  poems  Archbishop 
Vaughan  thus  writes :  “The  Pcmge  Lingua  and  the 
Sacris  Solemniis ,  so  exquisitely  theological,  so  ten¬ 
derly  effective,  so  reverently  adoring,  so  express¬ 
ive  of  every  want  and  aspiration  of  the  human  heart 
— where  are  two  hymns  so  touching,  so  poetical,  so 
angelical  as  they  are?  It  is  almost  impossible  to  re¬ 
sist  the  tender  piety  and  the  prayerful  appeal  con¬ 
tained  in  the  Adwo  Te.  To  the  soul  of  a  poet  the 
Angel  of  the  Schools  united  the  heart  of  a  saint  and 
the  vision  of  an  angel  and  all  three  he  consecrated 
in  his  verse  to  the  honor  and  glory  of  his  Eucharistic 
God.”  With  truth  has  he  been  called  “the  sweet 
Psalmist  of  the  Eucharist.” 

Among  the  notable  contributions  by  Dominicans 
to  Italian  literature  is  the  “Mirror  of  True  Pen¬ 
ance,”  by  Father  Passavanti.  It  was  translated  into 
Italian  from  the  Latin  by  the  author.  A  reprint  of 
it  was  published  in  1861.  The  editor  of  the  Della 
Cruscean  Academy  speaks  of  it  in  the  following 
7 


168 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


glowing  terms  :  “  ‘The  Mirror  of  True  Penance/  by 
Father  Passavanti,  a  Florentine  by  birth,  a  Domini¬ 
can  by  religious  profession,  written  in  the  style  of 
his  day,  but  adorned  with  the  purest  gold  of  the 
most  refined  eloquence,  has  gained  a  more  than  or¬ 
dinary  applause  both  for  the  sacred  matter  it  con¬ 
tains  and  the  charm  and  beauty  of  its  composition. 
And  as  many  have  thought  that  it  might  without 
disadvantage  be  compared  with  the  writings  of  the 
most  learned  among  the  first  Fathers  of  the  Church, 
so  we  also  may  consider  it  as  inferior  to  none  of  the 
choicest  and  most  renowned  masters  of  the  Tuscan 
tongue.” 

Another  Dominican  who  enriched  the  Italian 
language  by  his  literary  compositions  in  its  form¬ 
ative  period,  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  cen¬ 
tury,  was  Bartholomew  a  Santa  Concordia.  His 
work,  “The  Teaching  of  the  Ancients,”  receives  high 
praise  at  the  hands  of  Leonardo  Salvati  for  “its 
force,  brevity,  clearness,  beauty,  grace,  sweetness, 
purity  and  simple  ease  which  are  there  to  be  seen 
in  language  worthy  of  the  best  era  of  literature.” 
The  same  critic  adds :  “This  work  is  written  in  the 
best  and  noblest  style  which  the  age  had  yet  pro¬ 
duced,  and  it  would  be  fortunate  for  our  language 
were  the  volume  larger.”  The  distinguished  literary 
critic,  Pignotti,  places  these  two  Friars  Preachers, 
together  with  their  Dominican  brother,  Domenico 
Cavalca,  among  the  fathers  of  Italian  literature. 

No  less  worthy  of  a  place  among  the  makers  of 
the  Italian  language  is  the  illustrious  Dominican, 
Jordan  of  Pisa,  whom  his  contemporaries  described 
as  “a  prodigy  of  nature  and  a  miracle  of  grace.”  He 
was  among  the  first  to  attempt  to  establish  the  un- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  169 

formed  and  chaotic  language  of  Italy  on  a  scientific 
and  literary  basis.  In  the  few  fragments  of  his  ser¬ 
mons  that  are  extant  are  to  be  found  all  the  es¬ 
sential  elements  of  the  best  modern  Italian.  Not 
only  was  he  deeply  versed  in  theology  and  philoso¬ 
phy,  but  also,  as  Marchese,  quoting  Leander  Albert, 
tells  us,  “joined  the  eloquence  of  Tully  to  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  Mithridates.” 

But  Italian  was  not  the  only  language  to  which 
the  Friars  Preachers  helped  to  impart  a  scientific 
and  literary  character.  To  Tauler,  the  famous  Do¬ 
minican  mystic,  the  German  language  owes  its  first 
appearance  in  the  form  of  permanent  literature.  Of 
this  famous  preacher  and  writer  Hallam  thus 
speaks  :  “John  Tauler,  a  Dominican  Friar  of  Stras- 
burg,  whose  influence  in  propagating  the  mystical 
theology  gave  a  new  tone  to  his  country,  we  may 
deem  to  be  the  first  German  writer  in  prose.”  “Tau¬ 
ler, ”  says  the  same  historian  of  literature,  “in  his 
German  sermons  mingled  many  expressions  in¬ 
vented  by  himself  which  were  the  first  attempts  at 
a  philosophic  language,  and  displayed  surprising  elo¬ 
quence  for  the  age  in  which  he  lived.”  Tauler  died 
in  1361. 

But  of  all  the  books  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  came 
from  the  pens  of  Dominican  writers  none  ap¬ 
proached  in  popularity,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the 
term,  “The  Golden  Legend,”  written  by  James  of 
Voragine,  Archbishop  of  Genoa.  It  treated  of  the 
lives  of  the  greater  saints  of  the  Church  from  the 
beginning  of  Christianity,  and  of  the  legends  and 
miracles  associated  with  them.  Its  purpose  was  to 
inculcate  by  means  of  these  concrete  examples  the 
excellence  of  the  Christian  virtues.  Dr.  Walsh,  in 


l!70  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 

his  work,  "The  Thirteenth  Century”  includes  it 
among  the  three  most  widely  read  books  of  that 
century.  Other  historians  assert  that  its  popular¬ 
ity  continued  unabated  through  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries.  It  was  translated  into  every 
language  of  the  West  and  was  one  of  the  first  books 
to  be  chosen  to  illustrate  the  new  art  of  printing  in 
Italy. 

In  our  own  day  the  Order  has  given  to  ecclesi¬ 
astical  literature  the  works  of  such  theologians  as 
Lepidi  and  Dummermuth ;  philosophers  like  Car¬ 
dinals  Zigliara  and  Gonzales,  and  historians  of 
the  calibre  of  Denifle,  one  of  the  most  famous  wri¬ 
ters  of  medieval  history,  and  Guglielmotti,  whose 
“Military  and  Maritime  Dictionary”  is  the  standard 
work  of  its  kind  in  Italy.  “The  History  of  the  Pon¬ 
tifical  Fleet”  by  the  same  author,  is  regarded  as  a 
classic.  Leo  XIII  held  both  these  works  in  such 
high  esteem  that  he  planned  to  have  second  editions 
of  both  issued  from  the  Vatican  at  his  own  expense. 
At  Civita  Vecchia,  his  native  city,  an  imposing  mon¬ 
ument  was  erected  to  his  memory  in  1913. 

The  names  of  Dominican  writers  and  their  works 
cited  in  this  chapter  on  the  Order’s  literary  activity 
have  been  chosen  because  they  best  illustrate  the 
industry,  ability  and  versatility  of  the  Friars 
Preachers  in  this  field  of  religious  endeavor,  and 
not  with  a  view  to  give  a  comprehensive  list  of  the 
writers  of  the  Order.  In  all  there  have  been  over 
seven  thousand  writers  of  distinction  in  the  ranks  of 
the  Friars  Preachers. 

Among  the  more  important  of  the  publications  of 
the  Order  are  the  following.  In  France,  UAnsnee 
Dominic aine,  Le  Rezme  des  Sciences  PhUosophiques  et 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


171 


Theologiques,  Revue  Biblique  and  Rezrne  Thomiste.  In 
Spain  is  published  La  Ciencia  Tomista.  The  Anakcta 
Ordinis  P raedic atontm  is  the  official  organ  of  the  Or¬ 
der  and  is  published  at  Rome. 

Science 

Physical  and  applied  sciences  were  not  without 
their  devotees  among  the  Dominicans  of  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century.  Albert  the  Great  was  doubtless  the 
greatest  scientist  of  his  age.  Without  noticing  the 
fanciful  legends  that  have  been  woven  into  the  bio¬ 
graphy  of  this  altogether  extraordinary  man,  it  may 
be  said  that  his  achievements  in  the  field  of  physical 
science  were,  in  some  instances  at  least,  centuries 
ahead  of  his  times.  He  wrote  extensively  on  astron¬ 
omy,  cosmology,  botany,  mineralogy,  geography  and 
natural  history.  The  a  priori  methods  of  the  schools 
did  not  blind  him  to  the  necessity  of  an  inductive 
system  in  the  work  of  experimental  science.  This 
principle  he  was  the  first  to  put  into  practice,  and 
with  the  most  gratifying  results  to  science.  He, 
too.  was  the  first  to  perceive  the  law  of  affinities  in 
the  composition  of  metals.  With  the  same  earnest 
love  of  truth  which  characterized  his  ecclesiastical 
writings,  he  combated  the  popular  fallacy  of  the 
transmutation  of  baser  metals  into  gold  by  means  of 
the  philosopher’s  stone.  He  clearly  taught  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  the  sea  on  littoral  countries,  and  of  similar 
influences  exerted  by  mountains  and  forests.  The 
phenomena  of  disappearing  islands  and  others  pro¬ 
duced  by  volcanic  action  were  not  unknown  to  him. 
Dr.  Jesser,  who  wastes  no  love  on  Catholic  scholars, 
equals  Albert  in  his  Cosmos  to  Aristotle  and  Hum¬ 
boldt. 


172 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


In  his  astronomy  he  taught  that  the  “Milky  Way” 
was  nothing  but  a  vast  assemblage  of  stars  and  that 
the  figures  visible  on  the  moon’s  disk  are  due  to  the 
configuration  of  its  own  surface.  He  rejects  the 
teaching  of  Aristotle  concerning  the  rare  appear¬ 
ance  of  lunar  rainbows  and  asserts  that  they  may 
be  seen  as  often  as  twice  a  year. 

No  less  remarkable  was  his  knowledge  of  botany. 
“No  botanist,”  says  Meyer,  the  German  historian  of 
botany,  “who  lived  before  Albert  can  be  compared 
to  him,  unless  Theophrastes,  with  whom  he  was  not 
acquainted;  and  after  him  none  has  painted  nature 
in  such  living  colors  or  studied  it  so  profoundly  un¬ 
til  the  time  of  Conrad  Gesner  and  Caesalpino.”  His 
botanical  works  were  edited  by  Meyer  and  pub¬ 
lished  in  Berlin  in  1867. 

Humboldt,  a  German  naturalist  of  the  early  nine¬ 
teenth  century  and  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
scholars  of  his  time,  thus  expresses  his  appre¬ 
ciation  of  Albert  as  a  scientist :  “Albertus  Magnus 
was  equally  active  and  influential  in  promoting 
the  study  of  natural  science  and  the  Aristotel¬ 
ian  philosophy.  His  works  contain  some  ex¬ 
ceedingly  acute  remarks  on  the  organic  struc¬ 
ture  and  physiology  of  plants.  One  of  his  works 
bearing  the  title  Liber  C osmographicus  de  Natura 
Locorum ,  is  a  species  of  physical  geography.  I 
have  found  in  it  considerations  on  the  dependence 
of  temperature  concurrently  on  latitude  and  eleva¬ 
tion,  and  on  the  effect  of  different  angles  of  in¬ 
cidence  of  the  sun’s  rays  in  heating  the  ground, 
which  have  excited  my  surprise.”  The  work  thus 
praised  by  Humboldt  is  rich  in  original  observations 
on  ethnography  and  physiology.  In  fact,  Albert  not 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  173 

only  reviewed  and  compiled  the  entire  scientific 
knowledge  of  his  day,  but  he  enlarged  and  enriched 
it  with  the  fruits  of  his  own  acute  observation  and 
tireless  experimenting.  Considering  the  range  and 
magnitude  of  his  labors,  Hallam  grudgingly  says 
of  him :  “He  may  pass  for  the  most  fertile  writer 
of  the  world.”  Altogether  he  was,  as  Englebert,  his 
contemporary,  says,  “a  man  so  Godlike  in  all  science 
that  he  may  be  suitably  called  the  wonder  and  mir¬ 
acle  of  our  times.” 

St.  Thomas,  like  his  master  Albert,  applied  himself 
to  the  study  of  natural  science  and  made  important 
contributons  to  the  world’s  knowledge  of  this  sub¬ 
ject.  It  was  he  who  first  gave  expression,  at  the 
University  of  Paris,  to  the  principle,  “Nothing  is 
ever  annihilated”  (Nihil  omnino  in  nihilum  redigetur). 
In  announcing  this  principle  concerning  the  inde¬ 
structibility  of  matter  he  anticipated  by  six  hundred 
years  the  recognition  of  the  same  truth  by  the 
chemists  and  physicists  of  our  own  day.  In  the 
formulating  of  this  principle  he  also  included  the 
conservation  of  energy.  To  him  also  is  assigned  the 
authorship  of  a  remarkable  book  on  the  building  of 
aqueducts  and  another  on  bridge  construction. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  a  Do¬ 
minican  scientist,  Father  Dietrich,  wrote  a  work  on 
the  “Theory  of  the  Rainbow”  which  has  recently 
been  translated  into  German  by  Professor  Wuer- 
schmidt  of  Erlangen.  Speaking  of  this  work,  another 
learned  German,  Professor  Hellmann,  the  famous 
meteorologist  of  Hamburg,  says :  “It  is  the  great¬ 
est  achievement  of  its  kind  in  the  West  during  the 
Middle  Ages.”  He  describes  it  as  a  most  valuable 
contribution  to  the  sciences  with  which  it  deals.  In 


174  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND'  t 

regard  to  its  author  the  well-known  Max  Jacobi 
says :  “Master  Dietrich  was  the  first  to  discover 
that  the  rainbow  originates  through  the  double 
breaking  and  one  reflex  of  the  rays  of  the  sun  in 
the  raindrop.  We  have  to  thank  him  for  the  first 
correct  design  of  the  path  of  the  ray  as  it  enters  and 
leaves  the  little  sphere.” 

Among  the  engineers  of  his  day  there  was  none 
that  excelled  the  Dominican,  Ignatius  Dante.  When 
the  tyrant  Charles  Emmanuel  of  Savoy  menaced  the 
freedom  of  Genoa,  the  republic  called  him  to  her 
assistance  to  superintend  the  strengthening  of  the 
city’s  walls  in  preparation  for  the  coming  conflict. 
Soon  after  he  was  called  to  Rome  and  made  Master 
of  the  Sacred  Palace,  thereby  proving  that  he  was 
as  well  versed  in  sacred  as  in  profane  science.  But 
his  engineering  skill  was  soon  again  to  be  requisi¬ 
tioned.  He  was  called  upon  to  plan  and  superintend 
the  construction  of  the  defensive  works  of  the  Island 
of  Malta  when  it  was  threatened  by  the  Turks  in 
1640.  On  his  return  to  Rome  he  was  made  a  cardinal 
by  Urban  VIII. 

That  the  Dominicans  employed  their  knowledge 
of  science  in  behalf  of  those  among  whom  they 
labored  is  evident  from  the  many  valuable  and  en¬ 
during  works  they  erected  on  their  missions.  A 
single  example  of  this  was  a  bridge  designed  and 
built  by  a  Dominican  engineer  in  the  Philippines. 
This  bridge  —  the  famous  old  Tuguegaro  bridge  — 
some  years  ago  being  in  need  of  repairs,  an  Ameri¬ 
can  engineer,  Mr.  Barrens,  was  appointed  to  make 
a  survey  of  the  work  and  determine  whether  it 
should  be  replaced  by  a  modern  structure.  Mr. 
Barrens,  who  praised  in  unqualified  terms  the  work 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


175 


of  its  builder,  the  noted  Dominican  missionary, 
Father  Lobate,  advised  against  replacing  the  old 
bridge  by  a  modern  iron  one.  He  expressed  the 
opinion  that  the  old  bridge,  if  properly  repaired, 
would  last  more  than  a  hundred  years  longer,  while 
one  of  modern  material  would  cost  18,000  pesos  and 
would  have  to  be  rebuilt  within  thirty  years. 

We  cannot  more  appropriately  close  this  chapter 
on  the  scientists  of  the  Order  than  by  quoting  the 
following  statement  of  a  modern  historian :  “There 
are,  moreover,  an  unnumbered  multitude  of  Domini¬ 
can  mathematicians,  astronomers  and  geographers 
who  are  not  unknown  to  the  historians  of  these 
branches  of  learning.  But  at  the  present  day  one 
may  drag  out  from  obscurity — if  only  the  next  mo¬ 
ment  to  slip  back  again — the  name  of  Joseph  Galien, 
professor  of  Avignon  University,  who  in  1755  edited 
a  little  work  on  the  navigation  of  the  air/’  Thus, 
the  Friars  Preachers  not  only  compiled  all  existing 
knowledge  in  their  various  encyclopedias  and  sum¬ 
maries,  and  by  their  luminous  commentaries  made 
it  available  to  a  multitude  of  students,  but  by  their 
experiments  and  observations  blazed  the  way  to  im¬ 
portant  discoveries  and  applied  their  knowledge  to 
constructive  works  that  have  made  them  substantial 
benefactors  of  humanity. 

Missionaries  and  Martyrs 

The  most  perfect  expression  of  the  Dominican 
spirit  is  to  be  found  in  its  missionary  achievements. 
More  than  all  other  works  of  the  Order  they  real¬ 
ized  in  fullest  measure  the  ideal  of  St.  Dominic.  The 
three  dominant  elements  in  the  spirit  of  the  Order 


176 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


are  preaching,  science  and  Catholicism ;  and  these 
three  found  concrete  expression  in  the  missionary 
activities  upon  which  the  Friars  Preachers  entered 
with  such  divine  enthusiasm  from  the  very  first 
years  of  their  existence.  The  work  of  the  missions 
was,  of  course,  essentially  a  work  of  preaching — 
patient,  tireless,  hazardous  preaching.  The  ap¬ 
plause  of  the  multitude  and  the  admiration  of  the 
scholars,  which  might  prompt  the  zeal  of  those  who 
preached  in  the  great  cities  of  the  older  Christian 
nations,  found  no  place  in  the  motives  of  those  who 
journeyed  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  preach  the 
Gospel  at  the  peril  of  their  lives  to  those  who  knew 
not  Christ,  or  knew  Him  but  to  hate  Him.  For  the 
success  of  their  work  it  was  necessary  that  they 
be  familiar  with  the  language  of  those  to  whom 
they  preached ;  that  they  be  versed  in  the  errors  of 
the  unbelievers,  and  in  the  science  of  Christ  with 
which  to  refute  them.  Not  all  of  those  among 
whom  the  missionaries  labored  were  barbarians. 
Some,  indeed,  such  as  the  Arabians  and  Jews,  were 
in  touch  with  all  the  intellectual  movements  of  the 
times,  as  well  as  deeply  versed  in  their  own  schools 
of  divinity  and  philosophy.  Consequently,  it  was 
incumbent  upon  the  missionaries,  if  they  would  ef¬ 
fectively  represent  the  cause  of  Christ,  that  they  be 
not  wanting  in  that  science  which  St.  Dominic  had 
adopted  as  one  of  the  most  effective  weapons 
against  the  enemies  of  Christ.  The  catholic  or  uni¬ 
versal  element  of  Dominicanism  found  expression 
in  the  world-wide  character  which  the  missionary 
activities  of  the  Order  assumed  from  its  very  begin¬ 
ning.  Indeed,  one  of  the  most  wonderful  things  in 
the  beginnings  of  the  Dominican  Order  was  the 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


177 


astounding  rapidity  with  which  the  Friars  Preach¬ 
ers  spread  their  apostolic  missionaries  over  the  face 
of  the  entire  world,  as  it  was  known  in  those  days. 

The  one  dominant  thought  in  the  mind  of  St. 
Dominic  was  the  missions.  Impelled  by  a  charity 
towards  men  that  was  world-embracing,  he  longed 
to  carry  the  light  of  Christ’s  evangel  to  those  who 
sat  in  darkness  even  in  the  remotest  parts  of  the 
earth.  Long  before  he  conceived  the  idea  of  insti¬ 
tuting  a  religious  order,  he  had  planned  that  he  him¬ 
self  should  be  a  missionary.  It  was  the  missionary 
needs  of  the  Church  in  Europe  and  beyond  its  con¬ 
fines  that  suggested  to  him  the  plan  of  founding  an 
order  of  apostolic  preachers  which  should  perpetuate 
his  own  missionary  labors  and  expand  them  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth.  The  only  bond  that  bound  together 
his  little  band  of  followers  before  they  received  the 
approbation  of  the  Holy  See  was  their  common  mis¬ 
sionary  interests.  Even  in  those  days,  so  full  of 
apostolic  zeal  and  personal  hazard,  St.  Dominic  did 
not  abandon  his  long-cherished  hope  of  one  day 
carrying  the  light  of  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen. 
“When  we  have  established  our  Order,”  he  said  to 
one  of  his  followers,  “we  shall  go  out  to  evangelize 
the  Cuman  Tartars.” 

In  the  light  of  these  circumstances  it  can  hardly 
be  a  matter  of  wonder  that  the  first  activities  of 
the  Order  took  the  form  of  missionary  labors.  In 
the  very  last  year  of  St.  Dominic’s  life  Paul  of  Hun¬ 
gary  founded  a  province  in  his  native  land,  on  the 
frontier  of  the  country  inhabited  by  those  very 
Cuman  Tartars  whom  the  holy  patriarch  had  himself 
so  earnestly  longed  to  convert.  The  members  of 
this,  one  of  the  last  two  provinces  established  in 


i7a 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  lifetime  of  St.  Dominic,  immediately  entered 
with  holy  ardor  upon  the  task  of  evangelizing  these 
fierce  nomadic  tribes.  Their  efforts  were  ultimately 
attended  by  entire  success.  Thus,  the  cherished 
dream  of  the  founder  was  vicariously  accomplished 
by  his  zealous  missionaries.  Simultaneously  the 
Gospel  was  preached  by  the  same  fearless  mission¬ 
aries  to  the  people  of  the  Balkans,  and  the  reign  of 
Christ  firmly  established  among  them. 

In  the  earliest  years  of  their  missionary  activity 
the  Dominicans  extended  their  apostolic  zeal  to  the 
outposts  of  civilization.  In  1237,  the  Province  of  the 
Holy  Land  was  prosecuting  its  missionary  labors  in 
Asia  with  great  success.  In  that  year  its  provincial 
reported  to  Gregory  IX  that  Avonderful  results  had 
been  attained  among  Jacobites,  Nestorians,  Maro- 
nites,  and  Saracens.  Throughout  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries  these  missionaries  continued 
to  expand  their  field  of  labor  till  they  had  reached 
Bagdad  and  India.  They  were  the  first  Christian 
missionaries  to  plant  the  cross  in  China. 

In  1330  the  missions  in  Armenia,  which  had  been 
inaugurated  towards  the  middle  of  the  previous  cen¬ 
tury  were  firmly  established  throughout  the  country. 
From  the  ranks  of  the  Preachers  the  first  ruler  of 
the  Church  in  that  country  was  taken  in  the 
person  of  Blessed  Bartholomew  of  Bologna,  Arch¬ 
bishop  of  Naksivan.  So  successfully  did  the  mis¬ 
sionaries  combat  the  Greek  schismatics  that  they 
practically  ceased  to  exist,  and  the  Armenians  in 
ever-increasing  numbers  returned  to  the  pale  of 
Holy  Church.  According  to  the  ancient  Chris¬ 
tian  traditions  of  the  country,  seven  dioceses  were 
founded  at  that  time  whose  bishops  were  taken 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  1,79 

from  the  ranks  of  the  Dominican  brethren.  Not 
even  the  triumph  of  Mohammedanism  could  dis¬ 
possess  them  of  their  chosen  fields  of  labor,  and 
against  great  odds  they  continued  to  contest  val¬ 
iantly  the  empire  of  souls  with  the  followers  of 
Islam. 

No  less  successful  were  the  labors  of  the  Domini¬ 
cans  in  Persia.  Under  John  XXII,  Franco  of  Pe¬ 
rugia  was  made  Archbishop  of  Sultana,  and  the 
creation  of  six  other  dioceses,  all  of  them  governed 
by  bishops  chosen  from  the  Order,  raised  him 
to  the  dignity  of  a  metropolitan.  Perhaps  his 
most  important  individual  conquest  was  the  con¬ 
version  of  the  Primate  of  Armenia,  whom  he 
brought  into  union  with  and  submission  to  the 
See  of  Rome.  So  rapidly  did  the  missions  of  the 
Order  in  Asia  grow  that  in  1312  the  Master  General 
organized  them  into  a  special  congregation  called 
the  “Friars  Pilgrims,”  which  was  recruited  from  all 
the  other  provinces  of  the  Institute. 

But  even  before  these  missions  in  the  East  began 
to  produce  their  unfailing  harvests  of  souls,  the 
Friars  Preachers  had  directed  their  attention  to  the 
missionary  fields  of  Eastern  and  Northern  Europe. 
Among  the  most  apostolic  of  the  laborers  in  this 
vineyard  of  the  Lord  was  St.  Hyacinth,  whom  St. 
Dominic  himself  admitted  to  the  Order.  His  zeal 
was  boundless,  and  while  his  first  missionary  efforts 
were  directed  to  the  conversion  of  the  countries 
lying  to  the  north  and  east  of  France,  they  ulti¬ 
mately  extended  to  half  the  then  known  world. 
Journeying  north  from  Rome  with  his  brother 
Ceslaus,  to  whom  also  St.  Dominic  had  given  the 
habit  of  the  Order,  he  founded  as  he  went  the  Prov- 


180 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


ince  of  Germany  and  organized  that  of  Poland.  Un¬ 
der  his  leadership  the  brethren  in  Prussia  and 
Lithuania  materially  advanced  the  work  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  which  had  been  inaugurated  by  the  Teutonic 
Knights.  Bohemia,  the  Russias  and  Livonia  were 
the  next  scenes  of  his  truly  apostolic  labors.  In 
Scandinavia  he  established  a  province  of  the  Order, 
which  in  its  turn  evangelized  the  arctic  regions  of 
Greenland  two  hundred  years  before  America 
was  discovered.  Even  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea 
were  not  beyond  the  reach  of  his  apostolic  zeal,  and 
along  these  he  made  his  way  to  the  Grecian  Archi¬ 
pelago.  Turning  towards  Central  Asia,  it  is  said  he 
even  penetrated  into  Thibet  and  China.  Wherever 
he  went  he  left  behind  him  convents  of  his  brethren 
to  witness  and  perpetuate  his  missionary  activities. 
Everywhere  countless  souls  fell  under  the  spell  of 
his  eloquence,  his  sanctity  and  tireless  zeal.  Under 
his  tutelage  they  pledged  their  fealty  to  the  Christ 
whom  he  had  made  known  to  them  and  to  his  Vicar 
at  Rome. 

While  St.  Hyacinth  thus  extended  his  apostolate 
over  Europe  and  Asia,  Ceslaus,  in  every  way  worthy 
of  his  apostolic  brother,  labored  in  the  same  holy 
cause  among  the  Bohemians,  Silesians  and  Poles. 
In  1225  the  first  Spanish  Dominicans  preached  the 
Gospel  in  Morocco  and  in  the  same  year  the  superior 
of  the  mission,  Father  Dominic,  was  consecrated 
first  Bishop  of  that  place.  In  1258  the  Order  evan¬ 
gelized  the  Ruthenians,  while  at  the  same  time  St. 
Raymond  of  Pennafort  established  missionary  col¬ 
leges  at  Tunis  and  Tripoli. 

The  Fathers  of  the  English  Province  were  not  a 
whit  behind  their  brethren  of  the  older  provinces 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


181 


in  extending  the  boundaries  of  Christ’s  kingdom 
upon  earth.  To  the  apostolic  zeal  of  their  Latin 
confreres  many  of  them  added  administrative  abil¬ 
ity  of  a  high  order,  which  led  to  their  being  chosen 
to  rule  over  the  newly-established  dioceses  in  their 
missionary  districts.  In  this  manner  Henry  of  Eng¬ 
land  became  an  archbishop  of  Russia  in  1244  and 
converted  the  King  of  Litten  in  Livonia.  In  1248 
Father  Thomas  administered  the  bishopric  of  Abo 
in  Finland.  The  diocese  of  Ebron  in  Palestine  was 
ruled  over  by  Father  Geoffrey.  Father  William  was 
appointed  Archbishop  of  Rages,  and  Father  Belets 
Archbishop  of  Sultana  in  1403.  As  early  as  1330 
Father  Richard  was  made  Bishop  of  Lesser  Tartary. 
In  1468  Father  Bennett  was  elected  to  the  See  of 
Panido,  in  Roumania. 

Thus  the  Friars  Preachers  in  thousands  pushed  on 
to  the  remotest  outposts  of  civilization,  bearing  the 
message  of  salvation  to  those  who  knew  not  Christ 
nor  His  holy  Church.  In  1253 — that  is,  thirty-two 
years  after  the  death  of  St.  Dominic — Innocent  IV, 
writing  to  the  Friars  Preachers,  addressed  them  in 
these  significant  terms:  “To  our  dearly  beloved 
sons,  the  Friars  Preachers,  preaching  in  the  lands  of 
the  Saracens,  Greeks,  Bulgars,  Cumans,  Ethiopians, 
Syrians,  Goths,  Jacobites,  Armenians,  Indians,  Tar¬ 
tars,  Hungarians  and  the  other  heathen  peoples  of 
the  East,  health  and  apostolic  benediction.”  Thus 
the  Vicar  of  Christ  bears  eloquent  testimony  to  the 
far-flung  labors  of  the  children  of  St.  Dominic  in 
the  very  infancy  of  their  Order.  Their  activities  and 
their  triumphs  recall  the  days  of  the  Apostles  and 
constitute  one  of  the  most  remarkable  achieve¬ 
ments  in  the  ever-wonderful  history  of  the  Catholic 
Church. 


182  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 

9 

Nor  were  the  older  nations  neglected  for  the  bene¬ 
fit  of  the  oriental  missions.  The  white-robed  mis¬ 
sionaries  penetrated  into  every  corner  of  Europe, 
combating  heresy  and  stimulating  by  their  elo¬ 
quence  and  austerity  the  flagging  spirit  of  religion. 
For  twenty  years  St.  Vincent  Ferrer,  to  cite  but  one 
of  them,  preached  throughout  Western  Europe,  ex¬ 
ercising  over  his  auditors  a  spell  that  was  but  little 
short  of  miraculous.  A  multitude  of  penitents, 
sometimes  to  the  number  of  ten  thousand,  followed 
him  in  his  apostolic  wanderings,  unwilling  to  lose 
the  benefit  of  his  spiritual  direction.  Waldenses  and 
Catharini  alike  fell  under  the  charm  of  his  eloquence 
and  cheerfully  made  their  submission  to  the  Holy 
See.  But  it  was  in  his  native  Spain  that  his  greatest 
triumphs  were  achieved.  Here  the  numbers  of  his 
Jewish  converts  alone  was  twenty-five  thousand; 
and  to  them  he  added  thousands  of  Moors. 

The  Portuguese  conquests  in  Africa  and  the  East 
Indies  opened  up  a  new  field  of  missionary  oppor¬ 
tunity  which  the  Dominicans  were  not  slow  to  turn 
to  the  advantage  of  God’s  honor  and  glory.  As 
early  as  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  Portuguese 
Dominicans  reached  the  west  coast  of  Africa. 
Later,  they  accompanied  the  explorers  around  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  establish  their  missionary 
enterprise  on  the  east  coast  of  the  African  con¬ 
tinent.  From  there  they  eventually  worked  their 
way  in  quest  of  souls  into  India,  Ceylon,  Siam  and 
Malacca. 

When  it  seemed  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  fifteenth 
century  that  every  country  of  the  world  had  been 
reached  by  the  heroic  apostles  of  the  Order,  and  that 
the  pioneer  labors  of  the  previous  three  centuries 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


183 


must  now  give  way  to  the  less  hazardous  task  of 
organization  and  development,  Columbus  added  to 
the  then  known  world  the  two  magnificent  conti¬ 
nents  of  the  Western  Hemisphere.  His  glowing- 
stories  of  the  New  World’s  immeasurable  extent,  its 
wealth,  fertility,  its  innumerable  opportunities  ex¬ 
cited  in  the  ventursome  souls  of  the  nation  that  had 
financed  his  enterprise,  dazzling  dreams  of  con¬ 
quest,  power  and  wealth.  But  for  the  children 
of  St.  Dominic  it  had  another  meaning  —  the 
spiritual  conquest  of  its  teeming  millions  for  Christ. 
Enraptured,  they  contemplated  the  opportunity 
of  traversing  its  vast  distances  ;  of  bearing  the  first 
glad  tidings  of  salvation  to  its  benighted  peo¬ 
ples;  of  lifting  them  up  from  the  darkness  of 
heathen  ignorance  and  superstition  to  the  clear, 
white  light  of  God’s  eternal  truth ;  of  planting  the 
cross  in  every  settlement  and  center  of  human  habi¬ 
tation.  and  of  thus  establishing  the  spiritual  sov¬ 
ereignty  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 

The  discovery  of  the  New  World  had  a  special 
significance  for  the  Order  of  St.  Dominic ;  for  it 
was  owing  to  the  assistance  of  Diego  de  Deza  and 
other  Dominicans  of  Salamanca  that  Columbus  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  convincing  the  sovereigns  of  Spain  of  the 
feasibility  of  his  plan.  Columbus  himself  gener¬ 
ously  acknowledged  this  when  he  said  that  it  was 
to  the  Dominican,  Diego  de  Deza,  who  made  possi¬ 
ble  his  voyage  of  discovery,  that  the  sovereigns  of 
Spain  owed  their  possession  of  America. 

In  1510  the  first  band  of  Dominican  missionaries 
landed  on  the  sod  of  the  New  World  and  immedi¬ 
ately  plunged  with  ardor  and  zeal  into  the  work  of 
winning  it  for  Christ.  With  extraordinary  rapidity 


184 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


they  extended  their  labors  from  the  West  Indies  to 
the  mainland,  and  across  the  continent  of  South 
America  to  the  Pacific,  which,  in  turn,  they  crossed 
eventually  to  extend  their  saving  mission  to  the 
Philippines,  China  and  Japan. 

A  band  of  twelve  missionaries  inaugurated  the 
work  of  evangelizing  the  natives  of  New  Spain  in 
1526,  and  so  greatly  did  the  work  prosper  that  be¬ 
fore  long  their  foundations  had  reached  the  num¬ 
ber  of  one  hundred,  all  centers  of  apostolic  activ¬ 
ity.  By  1540  the  Order  had  erected  sixty  houses 
and  churches  in  New  Grenada  alone.  This  was  the 
field  in  which  St.  Louis  Bertrand,  undoubtedly  the 
greatest  of  South  American  missionaries,  began  his 
zealous  labor  for  souls  in  1562.  A  brief  description 
of  the  efforts  of  this  great  saint  will  help  us  to  un¬ 
derstand  the  quality  and  extent  of  the  work  of  the 
Dominican  missionaries,  of  which  work  they  are 
typical,  on  the  continent  of  South  America. 

From  Cartagena,  the  first  scene  of  his  labors,  St. 
Louis  went  to  Panama,  where,  we  are  told,  in  an  in¬ 
credibly  short  time  he  converted  six  thousand  of  the 
natives.  Tubera  was  his  next  scene  of  conquest, 
and  here  his  heroic  zeal  resulted  in  the  conversion 
of  the  entire  community,  to  the  number  of  ten  thou¬ 
sand.  And  the  marvellous  part  of  it  is  that  all  these 
neophytes  were  thoroughly  instructed  before  they 
were  permitted  to  enter  the  Church.  Cipacoa  and 
Paluato  yielded  a  harvest  of  souls  not  less  than  that 
of  Tubera.  At  St.  Martha  fifteen  thousand  converts 
were  the  reward  of  his  tireless  labors.  While  at  St. 
Martha  a  tribe  of  fifteen  hundred  Indians  came  to 
him  in  a  body  from  Paluato  to  beg  for  baptism, 
which  they  had  refused  to  accept  while  he  labored 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


185 


among  them.  Teneriffe,  Mompax  and  several  of  the 
West  India  Islands  were  in  turn  visited  by  the  saint 
in  his  never-ending  quest  for  souls,  and  yielded  rich 
harvests  under  the  spell  of  his  sanctity  and  tireless 
zeal.  The  bull  of  his  canonization  asserts  that  to 
facilitate  the  work  of  converting  the  natives  he  was 
miraculously  endowed  with  the  gift  of  tongues. 

But  the  name  of  St.  Louis  Bertrand  is  not  the  only 
one  that  looms  large  in  the  history  of  the  Dominican 
missions  of  South  America.  On  the  northern  coast 
of  this  continent,  forty  years  before  the  arrival  of 
the  saint.  Las  Casas  became  a  Dominican,  and  with 
redoubled  fervor  and  energy  continued  his  valiant 
championship  of  the  Indians.  In  another  chapter 
we  shall  give  proper  consideration  to  the  great  Do¬ 
minican  and  his  heroic  labors  in  behalf  of  the 
aborigines. 

Some  idea  of  the  number  of  Dominican  mission¬ 
aries  in  the  New  World,  and  the  far-reaching  scope 
of  their  labors,  may  be  inferred  from  the  rapid 
growth  of  the  Order  in  this  new  field  of  mission- 
ary  labor.  The  Province  of  the  Holy  Cross,  in¬ 
cluding  San  Domingo  and  the  neighboring  islands, 
the  first  of  the  Western  Hemisphere,  was  estab¬ 
lished  in  1530.  This  was  quickly  followed  in 
1532  by  the  Province  of  St.  James  in  Mexico. 

In  1539  the  Province  of  St.  John  the  Baptist 

in  Peru  was  founded.  1  welve  years  later  the 

Provinces  of  St.  Vincent  in  Guatamala  and  St. 

Antoninus  in  New  Grenada  were  called  into  ex¬ 
istence.  The  year  1580  saw  the  Province  of  St. 
Catherine  in  Peru  established;  while  in  1592,  just  a 
century  after  the  discovery  of  America,  the  Prov¬ 
ince  of  St.  Lawrence,  in  Chili,  which  numbered  over 


186  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 

V 

forty  convents,  was  founded.  From  South  America 
they  went  to  the  Philippines  and  thence  to  China, 
Ayhich  they  entered  in  1590,  and  eleven  years  later 
extended  their  missionary  labors  to  Japan.  To  the 
ordinary  student  of  history  it  was  perhaps  but  a 
fortuitous  circumstance  that  the  New  World  was 
discovered  and  opened  up  to  the  courageous  mis¬ 
sionaries  of  the  Catholic  Church  only  a  few  decades 
before  Luther  began  his  career  of  protestation  and 
subversion.  But  to  one  who  sees  in  the  seemingly 
tragic  and  contradictory  events  of  life  the  harmoni¬ 
ous  elements  of  a  great  plan,  conceived  in  eternity 
and  executed,  age  after  age,  by  the  hand  of  Divine 
Providence,  the  discovery  of  America  by  a  Catholic 
nation  must  appear  as  a  God-given  opportunity  for 
the  Church  to  recoup  in  the  New  World  the  losses 
she  was  to  sustain  in  the  Old  by  the  rebellion  and 
defection  of  so  many  of  her  children  under  the  blind 
leadership  of  the  embittered  and  vengeful  heresi- 
arch.  What  is  true  of  the  Church  in  general  is  espe¬ 
cially  true  of  the  Order  of  Friars  Preachers.  The 
revolt  of  Luther  cost  the  Order  six  provinces  and 
hundreds  of  convents.  In  that  selfsame  fateful  six¬ 
teenth  century  the  Order  founded  seven  new  prov¬ 
inces  and  hundreds  of  convents  in  America.  Truly 
the  finger  of  God  was  here ! 

That  the  splendid  qualities  of  heroic  zeal  and  self- 
sacrifice  which  characterized  the  pioneer  mission¬ 
aries  of  the  Order  in  the  first  centuries  of  its  exist¬ 
ence  have  not  in  our  own  day  departed  from  its 
ranks  is  witnessed  by  its  many  undertakings  in  this 
field  of  religious  effort.  To  the  care  of  the  Domin¬ 
icans  have  been  intrusted  the  missions  in  Mesopo¬ 
tamia  and  Kurdistan,  and  they  furnish  the  incum- 


i 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


187 


bents  of  these  archiepiscopal  sees.  The  Belgian  Do¬ 
minicans  are  laboring  heroically  in  the  Congo.  To 
the  care  of  the  Dutch  Dominicans  have  been  confided 
the  missions  of  Porto  Rico  and  Curacao.  The  Span¬ 
ish  and  French  provinces  furnish  the  mission¬ 
aries  for  Brazil,  Chili  and  Ecuador.  For  several 
centuries  before  the  Spanish-American  War  the 
missionary  province  of  the  Philippines  devoted  itself 
to  the  evangelization  of  those  islands  and  of  five 
vicariates  in  China  and  Tonquin.  This  province  is 
made  up  of  Spaniards,  to  the  number  of  six  hun¬ 
dred.  Their  virtual  expulsion  and  the  consequent 
loss  of  faith  to  thousands  of  the  Philippinos  is  one 
of  the  saddest  chapters  in  the  missionary  history  of 
the  Church. 

We  cannot,  perhaps,  more  fittingly  conclude  this 
subject  than  by  quoting  the  following  beautiful 
tribute  paid  to  the  missionaries  of  the  Order  by 
Mgr.  Vaughan  in  his  splendid  “Life  of  St.  Thomas” : 

“Within  twenty  years  after  St.  Dominic’s  death 
the  Gospel  had  been  preached  in  almost  every  coun¬ 
try.  *  *  *  During  the  Middle  Ages  the  pulses  of 
the  mighty  heart  of  the  great  Order  were  felt 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  known  world,  from  the 
northwest  coast  of  Africa  to  the  great  water  courses 
of  Asia ;  from  Fez  and  Morocco  as  far  as  Greenland. 
A  party  of  Dutch  sailors  was  struck  with  astonish¬ 
ment,  when,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury,  touching  on  the  coast  of  Greenland,  they  found 
that  men  clothed  in  the  white  wool  of  St.  Dominic 
had  been  preaching,  praying  and  studying  in  that  in¬ 
hospitable  region  for  upwards  of  four  hundred 
years.  It  was  through  Dominican  influence  at  the 
court  of  Spain  that  Columbus  obtained  the  ships  in 


188 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


which  he  made  the  discovery  of  the  New  World; 
and  they  were  Dominicans  who  followed  upon  the 
footsteps  of  the  enterprising  subjugators  of  that 
vast  continent  and  planted  the  standard  of  the  cross 
wherever  the  others  had  been  victorious  with  the 
sword.  At  the  commencement  of  the  sixteenth  cen¬ 
tury  they  colonized  the  East  and  West  Indies.  In 
1550,  in  the  Peninsula  of  Malacca  and  the  adjacent 
islands  the  Dominicans  had  eighteen  convents  and 
made  sixty  thousand  converts.  Then  they  pene¬ 
trated  into  Siam  and  were  the  first  Christian  mis¬ 
sionaries  who  set  foot  in  China,  where  they  estab¬ 
lished  schools  and  built  churches.  They  had  already 
settled  in  San  Domingo,  Mexico  and  the  Floridas. 
In  1526  they  sent  twelve  brothers  to  New  Spain 
where  they  soon  had  a  hundred  houses  and  convents. 
In  1540,  they  possessed  in  New  Grenada  sixty 
houses  and  churches.  In  Chili  they  had  forty  con¬ 
vents.  The  Philippine  Isles,  Mozambique,  and  the 
eastern  coast  of  Africa  were  under  Dominican  in¬ 
fluence,  while  at  Manila  and  Lima  they  established 
universities  for  the  education  of  the  higher  classes. 
Within  a  hundred  years  (1234-1334)  they  could 
number  thirteen  thousand  three  hundred  and  sev¬ 
enty  martyrs.” 

Even  though  the  concluding  sentence  of  the  pre¬ 
vious  paragraph  had  not  prepared  one  for  it,  it 
might  .easily  have  been  inferred  that  these  great 
conquests  of  souls  had  not  been  accomplished  with¬ 
out  the  sacrifice  of  thousands  of  the  heroic  mis¬ 
sionaries  upon  the  altar  of  truth.  Plunging,  as  they 
did,  into  the  very  heart  of  heathendom  where  there 
were  neither  ambassadors  nor  consuls  from  home  to 
whom  they  might  look  for  protection,  they  knew 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


189 


full  well  that  they  must  fertilize  the  land  of  their 
labors  with  their  life’s  blood  if  they  would  gather 
the  harvest  for  Christ.  It  was  with  this  expectation 
and  this  longing  that  they  entered  upon  their  sub¬ 
lime  mission.  Indeed,  it  would  have  been  strange 
had  it  been  otherwise,  since  their  holy  founder  had 
constantly  yearned  to  give  up  his  life  for  the 
Faith.  We  recall  that  when  his  life  was  threat¬ 
ened  at  Carcassonne  he  joyously  approached  the 
place  where  the  would-be  assassins  lay  in  wait,  in 
the  hope  that  the  outpouring  of  his  blood  might 
bring  the  blessing  of  God  upon  the  labors  of  his 
companions. 

From  the  very  beginnng  of  its  career  even  to  the 
present  day  the  Order  has  furnished  a  multitude  of 
white-robed  martyrs  who  heroically  laid  down  their 
lives  in  testimony  of  the  truth  they  preached.  Every 
ten  years  since  its  foundation,  as  a  modern  writer 
tells  us,  it  has  offered  victims  on  the  altar  of  truth. 
Even  in  his  own  day  St.  Dominic  had  the  happiness 
of  seeing  hundreds  of  his  faithful  missionaries  in 
Hungary  measuring  up  to  the  supreme  test  of 
martyrdom.  In  a  single  massacre  two  hundred  of 
them  gave  up  their  lives  to  witness  the  Faith  of 
Christ.  Some  time  after  this,  in  1242,  Blessed  Paul, 
the  founder  of  the  Hungarian  Province,  together 
with  ninety  of  his  brethren,  laid  down  his  life  for 
the  conversion  of  those  among  whom  he  labored. 
Many  of  the  brethren  died  at  the  hands  of  the  Albi- 
genses,  among  whom  the  missionary  career  of  the 
Order  was  inaugurated.  Eighteen  years  later 
Blessed  Sadoc  and  forty-seven  of  his  community 
were  martyred  at  Sandomir,  in  Poland,  as  the\ 
chanted  the  “Hail,  Holy  Queen,”  which  they  finished 


190  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 

before  the  throne  of  God  in  heaven.  In  1261  two 
hundred  Friars  Preachers  fell  beneath  the  sword  of 
the  Mussulman.  As  St.  Peter  Martyr  lay  dying 
from  the  blow  of  a  heretic’s  dagger,  he  doubly  wit¬ 
nessed  the  faith  within  him  by  writing  on  the 
ground  with  the  blood  which  flowed  from  his 
wounds  these  words :  “I  believe  in  one  God”  ( Credo 
in  tmum  Deurn).  A  general  chapter  held  at  Valen¬ 
cia  drew  up  a  list  of  13,370  members  of  the  Order 
wrho  had  been  martyred  between  1234  and  1335 — a 
single  Century !  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  num¬ 
ber  had  reached  the  stupendous  figure  of  26,000. 

St.  John  of  Gorcum  and  his  companions  gave  up 
their  lives  in  Holland  in  defence  of  the  dogmas  of 
the  Church.  In  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  the 
blood  of  Dominican  martyrs  was  poured  forth  in 
copious  streams  during  the  Reformation.  It  is  re¬ 
corded  of  Father  Barry,  the  Dominican  prior  of 
Cashel,  in  Ireland,  that  the  captain  of  the  soldiers 
sent  to  execute  him,  strongly  impressed  with  the 
friar’s  holy  and  noble  bearing,  offered  him  his  life  if 
he  would  fling  off  his  habit.  The  heroic  Dominican 
replied :  “This  habit  is  for  me  the  livery  of  Christ 
and  an  emblem  of  His  passion ;  it  is  the  uniform  of 
the  military  service  I  owe  Him.  Since  my  youth  I 
have  worn  it ;  I  will  not  give  it  up  in  my  old  age.” 
The  fire  was  then  lighted,  and  as  the  flames  envel¬ 
oped  him  the  head  which  would  not  bend  before  the 
altars  of  Henry  VIII  fell  in  full  devotion  to  the 
Faith  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  soil  of  Japan  was  also  fructified  with  the 
blood  of  Dominican  missionaries.  In  the  seven¬ 
teenth  century  one  hundred  and  three  of  the  breth¬ 
ren  received  the  crown  of  martyrdom.  As  they 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


191 


stood  before  their  executioners,  William  Courtet 
and  Michael  Orazata  cried  out :  “0  Jesus,  it  is  sweet 
to  suffer  for  Thee !  Queen  of  the  Most  Holy  Ro¬ 
sary,  pray  for  us !” 

Even  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  Order  has  not 
failed  to  increase  the  number  of  those  glorious 
heroes  who  were  not  afraid  to  give  testimony  of 
Christ  with  their  life’s  blood.  We  can  find  space 
for  only  the  most  distinguished  of  the  valiant  mis¬ 
sionaries  who  were  martyred  in  Tonquin :  Bishop 
Ignatius  Delgado  died  in  prison  July  21,  1838; 
Bishop  Dominic  Henares,  his  coadjutor,  was  be¬ 
headed  July  25,  1838;  Father  Joseph  Fernandez, 
Vicar  Provincial,  was  beheaded  July  24,  1838; 
Bishop  Joseph  Mary  Diaz  was  beheaded  July  20, 
1857 ;  Bishop  Melchior  Garcia  san  Pedro  was  cut 
into  pieces  on  July  28,  1858,  and  in  the  midst  of  his 
agony  continued  to  render  thanks  to  God  for  the 
opportunity  to  die  for  Him;  Bishop  Jerome  Her- 
mosilla  and  Bishop  Valentine  Berrio-Ochoa  were 
beheaded  November  1,  1861.  The  latter  were  beati¬ 
fied  in  1906  by  Pope  Pius  X.  Eight  years  after  the 
death  of  these  devoted  apostles  in  the  Orient,  five 
of  their  brethren  were  shot  down  in  the  crowded 
streets  of  Paris  by  order  of  the  Commune  for  no 
other  reason  than  their  devotion  to  the  Faith. 

This  brief  sketch  of  the  martyred  apostles  of  the 
Order  is  eloquently  suggestive  of  the  heroic  spirit 
of  the  devoted  missionaries  who  labored  so  disin¬ 
terestedly  to  bring  the  nations  to  the  knowledge  of 
Christ,  and  the  immeasurable  sacrifices  they  were 
prepared  to  make  for  God  and  His  Church.  The  full 
recital  of  their  sufferings  contained  in  the  volumi¬ 
nous  records  of  the  different  provinces  is  undoubt- 


192 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


edly  the  most  glorious  chapter  in  all  Dominican 

history. 

Saints  and  Mystics 

A  certain  lack  of  initiative  in  promoting  the  can¬ 
onization  of  its  saints  has  been  tradtional  among  the 
Friars  Preachers  from  the  time  that  the  canoniza¬ 
tion  of  St.  Dominic  was  first  mooted,  shortly  after 
his  death.  To  the  friends  of  the  Order  who  impor¬ 
tuned  them  to  present  his  cause  to  the  Holy  See 
the  first  Dominicans  replied  that  the  heroic 
quality  of  the  founder’s  sanctity  was  known  to 
God  and  that  was  sufficient.  It  was  only  when 
the  Holy  Father  himself  expressed  the  wish 
that  they  should  inaugurate  the  process  pre¬ 
paratory  to  his  elevation  to  the  altars  of  the 
Church  that  they  became  active  with  that  end  in 
view.  Even  a  few  decades  ago  when  the  last  of 
their  heroic  brothers  were  solemnly  beatified  by  the 
Church,  it  required  a  special  exhortation  from  the 
Holy  See  to  stir  the  authorities  of  the  Order  into 
action  in  behalf  of  their  saintly  brethren.  To  the 
same  indifference  to  public  recognition  is  due  the 
irreparable  loss  of  the  history  of  many  wonderful 
missionary  achievements.  So  long  as  they  labored 
tirelessly  for  God  and  the  salvation  of  souls,  and 
willingly  died  for  His  name’s  sake,  it  mattered  not 
to  them  whether  their  names  and  the  details  of  their 
apostolic  work  were  inscribed  on  the  pages  of  his¬ 
tory  for  the  admiration  and  applause  of  men.  Hence 
it  is  that  during  seven  hundred  years  but  ten  of  the 
Friars  Preachers  and  four  of  the  Dominican  sister¬ 
hood  have  been  solemnly  canonized  by  the  Church. 
To  these,  however,  may  be  added  the  names  of  more 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


193 


than  two  hundred  others  who  have  been  solemnly 
beatified. 

It  is  not  the  spirit  of  the  Dominican  Order  to  cast 
all  its  subjects  in  one  mould  and  thus  produce  a  mo¬ 
notonously  uniform  type  of  religious.  It  is  rather 
the  genius  of  its  spiritual  formation  not  only  to  pre¬ 
serve  the  individuality  of  its  members  but  to  de¬ 
velop  it  to  the  utmost  on  a  solid  foundation  of  the 
Dominican  spirit.  Consequently,  whatever  natural 
talents  or  inclinations  the  student  may  have, 
whether  they  be  ecclesiastical  or  secular,  are  devel¬ 
oped  with  a  view  to  turning  them  to  the  service  of 
religion.  Originality  and  initiative  are  encouraged 
rather  than  suppressed ;  for  to  these  qualities  in  no 
little  degree  is  attributable  the  enduring  good 
wrought  by  the  Friars  Preachers.  Thus,  while  all 
possess  the  common  qualities  that  make  up  the  Do¬ 
minican  spirit,  each  gives  it  expression  according  to 
to  the  manner  of  his  own  personality.  It  is  largely 
owing  to  this  policy  that  the  works  of  the  Order 
have  been  so  varied  and  its  interests  have  reached 
out  to  so  many  spheres  of  action. 

The  same  striking  diversity  of  personality  is  to  be 
found  distinguishing  saint  from  saint  and  character¬ 
izing  the  work  of  each.  A  modern  writer  thus 
strikes  off  the  characteristic  qualities  of  some  of 
the  Dominican  saints:  “St.  Dominic,  with  his  im¬ 
perial  spirit  of  government,  as  Cardinal  Newman 
calls  it;  St.  Hyacinth,  the  adventurous  Knight  of 
Christ ;  St.  Peter,  the  intrepid  controversialist ;  St. 
Thomas,  the  calm,  dispassionate  theologian ;  St. 
Antoninus,  the  gentle,  fatherly  archbishop ;  St. 
Pius,  the  uncompromising  champion  of  Christen¬ 
dom  ;  St.  Louis  Bertrand,  the  missionary  whose 


194 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


view  of  life  was  always  overshadowed  by  sadness ; 
St.  Catherine,  the  idealist  and  practical  mystic — all 
are  types  that  charm,  yet  in  what  divers  ways.”  St. 
Dominic  united  within  himself  the  apparently  con¬ 
tradictory  qualities  of  the  fiery  apostle  and  uncom¬ 
promising  champion  of  orthodoxy,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  on  the  other  those  of  the  tolerant,  broad¬ 
minded  practical  legislator.  The  Angel  of  the 
Schools  lived  the  same  life  as  his  spiritual  father, 
St.  Dominic,  fought  the  same  fight  and  served  as 
effectively  the  same  ends,  without  ever  leaving  his 
cell  except  to  journey  from  university  to  university. 
While  St.  Dominic  combated  thousands  of  his  ene¬ 
mies  face  to  face,  St.  Thomas  combated  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  them  with  the  arms  of  reason  on  the 
field  of  the  intellect,  and  combats  them  no  less  suc¬ 
cessfully  today,  six  hundred  years  after  his  death. 
It  is  peculiar  to  the  Dominican  Order  that  in  its 
most  distinguished  lights  science  and  sanctity  have 
been  united  in  a  preeminent  degree.  In  truth,  its 
greatest  scholars  have  been  its  greatest  saints. 
Without  further  reference  to  St.  Dominic  or  St. 
Thomas,  we  may  point  out  that  St.  Raymond  was 
one  of  the  greatest  canonists  in  the  history  of  the 
Church.  St.  Hyacinth  was  a  Doctor  of  Law  and 
Divinity  of  the  University  of  Bologna  at  a  time 
when  only  those  of  rare  intellectual  distinction  could 
aspire  to  such  a  degree.  St.  Peter  Martyr,  made 
general  inquisitor  by  Gregory  IX,  was  the  destroyer 
of  the  Manichean  heresy  throughout  Italy.  St.  An¬ 
toninus  attained  fame  as  a  theological  writer  and 
economist.  St.  Vincent  Ferrer  discharged  the 
duties  of  professor  of  theology  at  Valencia,  confes¬ 
sor  to  the  Queen  of  Aragon  and  legate  a  latere . 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


195 


Pius  V  was  for  sixteen  years  professor  of  theology 
and  philosophy.  And  if  St.  Louis  Bertrand  and  St. 
John  Gorcum  did  not  measure  up  to  the  greatest  of 
the  Order’s  intellectual  celebrities,  neither  were  they 
destitute  of  intellectual  gifts  of  more  than  ordinary 
character.  Enough  has  been  said  in  other  chapters 
concerning  the  intellectual  endowments  of  Blessed 
Albert  the  Great  to  rank  him  among  the  greatest 
scholars  of  all  time ;  and  his  sanctity  was  but  little, 
if  any,  inferior  to  the  greatness  of  his  intellect.  St. 
Rose  was  not  the  only  member  of  the  Order  in  the 
Western  Hemisphere  to  win  the  formal  recognition 
of  the  Church  for  sanctity  of  an  eminent  degree. 
The  virtues  of  Martin  Porres,  a  half-caste  Indian, 
and  John  Massias,  both  of  the  Province  of  Peru, 
who  humbly  served  in  the  ranks  of  the  lay-brothers, 
also  received  the  formal  recognition  of  the  Church. 

While  the  Dominicans  conferred  a  priceless  serv¬ 
ice  upon  the  Church  by  defending  Catholic  ortho¬ 
doxy  against  the  aberrations  of  darkened  intel¬ 
lects  with  the  luminous  reasoning  of  its  great  doc¬ 
tors,  at  the  same  time  it  provided  spiritual  food  for 
the  hearts  of  the  people  in  the  devotional  writings 
of  its  great  mystics,  Eckhart,  Tauler,  Suso,  St.  Cath*- 
erine  and  Savonarola.  Indeed,  the  fame  of  the  mys¬ 
tics  of  the  Order  is  more  generally  known  through¬ 
out  the  universal  Church  even  than  that  of  its  dog¬ 
matic  theologians  and  apologists.  It  is  not  confined 
to  the  knowledge  of  scholars  and  ecclesiastics,  but 
is  familiar  to  the  religious  of  every  congregation  of 
the  Church,  as  well  as  to  thousands  of  the  devout 
laity. 

One  of  the  most  famous  schools  of  mysticism  in 
the  Order  was  that  founded  in  Germany  by  Meister 


196 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Eckhart.  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  and  Meister  Eck- 
hart,  though  they  considered  the  matter  from  dif¬ 
ferent  points  of  view,  were  probably  the  greatest 
medieval  authorities  on  the  mystical  life.  The 
latter,  born  about  1260,  is  universally  recognized 
as  the  father  of  German  mysticism,  and  by  many 
as  the  greatest  of  the  German  mystics.  A  pro¬ 
found  theologian,  a  lucid  philosopher,  an  eloquent 
preacher,  a  successful  professor  of  theology  at  the 
universities  of  Paris,  Strasburg  and  Cologne,  an 
efficient  administrator  in  the  offices  of  prior,  vicar- 
general  and  provincial,  he  was  anything  but  an  un¬ 
practical  dreamer.  Indeed,  it  was  because  of  these 
many  accomplishments  and  fields  of  experience  that 
he  was  able  to  found  a  school  of  mysticism  charac¬ 
terized  by  sanity  and  soundness,  which  even  so 
great  an  apostle  as  the  Dominican  John  Tauler — a 
hater  of  all  forms  of  exaggeration — could  approve 
and  embrace.  Another  illustrious  disciple  of  Meister 
Eckhart  was  Blessed  Henry  Suso,  who  might  be 
called  the  poet  of  the  school  of  German  mysticism. 
These  men  were  not  recluses  or  visionaries  dream¬ 
ing  their  lives  away  in  the  fruitless  meditations  of 
undisciplined  and  vacant  minds.  Well  trained  and 
instructed  in  the  efficient  schools  of  the  Order,  their 
mysticism  was  founded  upon  the  definitive  and  pos¬ 
itive  theology  of  the  Church  and  directed  to  prac¬ 
tical  ends.  We  have  seen  the  practical  character  of 
the  life-work  of  Eckhart,  the  founder  of  the  German 
school.  Tauler  was  no  less  practical.  As  a  preacher 
it  was  said  of  him  that  “he  set  the  whole  world 
aflame  by  his  fiery  tongue/’  With  the  facility  of  a 
true  Dominican  he  passed  from  contemplation  to 
preaching,  and,  his  preaching  finished,  he  resumed 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


197 


his  meditations.  A  kindred  spirit  was  Blessed 
Henry  Suso,  to  whom  Bellarmine  referred  as  “a 
preacher  eminent  for  piety  and  learning.”  The  cel¬ 
ebrated  Louis  of  Blois  spoke  of  him  as  “the  zealous 
defender  of  the  Catholic  faith,  whose  writings  are 
not  merely  orthodox  but  even  divine.”  As  contem¬ 
plative,  teacher,  writer  and  preacher,  he  exercised 
a  wonderful  influence  over  the  souls  of  those  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact.  His  “Little  Book  of 
Eternal  Wisdom”  was  one  of  the  most  popular 
works  on  mysticism  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in  its 
English  translation  continues  in  our  own  day  to  in¬ 
spire  souls  with  an  ever-increasing  love  of  God. 
Both  Tauler  and  Suso  were  contemporaries  and  dis¬ 
ciples  of  Meister  Eckhart. 

Among  Italian  mystics  the  names  of  Jerome  Sav¬ 
onarola.  Giordano  da  Rivalta,  Domenico  Cavalca  and 
Jacopo  Passavanti  are  to  be  found.  Not  only  were 
they  famous  for  their  mastery  of  Christian  mysti¬ 
cism  but  for  the  dignity  of  style  in  which  they  gave 
it  expression. 

Sociological 

It  is  customary  for  the  irreligious  social  reformer 
to  assail  the  religious  organizations  of  the  Church 
as  being  non-producers ;  as  though  material  pro¬ 
ductiveness  were  the  sole  test  of  social  or  economic 
utility.  Under  such  a  test  some  of  the  most  gener¬ 
ous  contributors  to  social  progress  and  civilization 
would  have  to  be  branded  as  parasites  on  the  body 
politic.  It  is  not  they  who  have  turned  out  the  com¬ 
modities  of  trade  with  hand  and  tool,  but  they  who 
have  labored  in  the  workshop  of  their  fecund  intel¬ 
lects  that  have  shaped  and  accelerated  the  progress 


198 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  mankind.  Such  were  the  priceless  contributions 
of  St.  Dominic  and  his  Friars  to  society,  apart  from 
their  purely  religious  activity.  Whatever  pertained 
to  the  betterment  of  the  human  race  enlisted  their 
interest  and  earnest  efforts.  Thus,  Balmez,  the 
great  Spanish  philosopher  and  historian,  tells  us 
that  “if  the  illustrious  Spaniard, Dominic  de  Gusman, 
and  the  wonderful  man  of  Assizi  did  not  occupy  a 
place  on  our  altars,  there  to  receive  the  veneration 
of  the  faithful  for  their  eminent  sanctity,  they 
would  deserve  to  have  statues  raised  to  them  by  the 
gratitude  of  society  and  humanity.” 

With  divine  enthusiasm,  apd  actuated  only  by  love 
of  their  fellow  men,  they  labored  with  might  and 
main  to  eradicate  the  deep-seated  ills  which  kept 
Europe  in  a  state  of  chronic  belligerency,  and  made 
wide-spread  poverty  a  permanent  dweller  in  the 
land.  They  were  tireless  and  most  successful  advo¬ 
cates  of  peace  and  implacable  opponents  of  wanton 
war.  They  organized  societies  to  promote  the  ends 
of  peace  and  to  create  a  sentiment  hostile  to  the 
perpetual  conflicts  waged  by  unscrupulous  princes 
to  further  their  own  selfish  ends.  Oderic  Raynaldus 
graphically  describes  the  crusade  of  protest  led  by 
Blessed  Ventura  of  Bergamo  against  the  nobility 
and  tyrants  of  Italy  who  were  drenching  the  land 
with  the  blood  of  their  fellow  countrymen  in  per¬ 
sonal  and  purposeless  quarrels.  Ten  thousand  pen¬ 
itents,  whom  he  had  persuaded  to  abandon  their  an¬ 
cient  feuds  and  animosities,  were  formed  by  him 
into  a  vast  peace  society,  and  these  he  led  in  pious 
pilgrimage  to  Rome  to  seal  on  the  tomb  of  the  Apos¬ 
tles  their  vows  of  life-long  amity  and  concord. 
Through  the  different  cities  of  Europe  they  jour- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


199 


neyed  towards  their  goal  in  perfect  order,  chanting 
the  praises  of  God  and  crying,  “Peace,  Penance  and 
Mercy !”  Throughout  the  entire  journey  they  were 
a  source  of  edification  to  all  who  beheld  them.  To 
many  a  strife-torn  town  through  which  they  passed 
they  brought  peace  and  concord  and  a  wholesome 
abhorrence  of  senseless  war. 

No  less  famous  as  a  promoter  of  peace  was  John 
of  Vicenza,  podesta  (mayor)  of  Verona,  who  capti¬ 
vated  all  Lombardy  -with  the  eloquence  of  his 
preaching.  Concerning  him  a  medieval  historian 
says:  “Never  since  the  time  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  were  there  seen  such  multitudes  gathered  to 
hear  this  friar  preach  peace.  He  had  such  power 
over  all  minds  that  everywhere  he  was  suffered  to 
arrange  the  terms  of  reconciliation.  *  *  *  Fam¬ 
ilies  and  states  sought  his  counsel,  and  not  without 
profit.  So  great  was  the  confidence  in  his  judgment 
that  prisons  were  opened  at  his  word  and  their  in¬ 
mates  restored  to  liberty.  Family  feuds  which  had 
endured  for  centuries  succumbed  to  his  peacemak¬ 
ing  efforts.”  Governors,  kings  and  pontiffs  availed 
themselves  of  his  great  wisdom  and  sound  judg¬ 
ment  to  promote  the  ends  of  blessed  peace.  So 
complete  was  the  confidence  of  the  people  in  the 
good  judgment  of  the  Dominicans  that  many  of 
the  cities  of  Lombardy  placed  their  affairs  and  their 
statutes  in  the  hands  of  the  Friars  Preachers  for 
correction  and  rearrangement  when  necessary.  The 
pontificates  of  the  Dominican  Popes  Innocent  V  and 
Benedict  XI  were  conspicuous  for  their  achieve¬ 
ments  in  promoting  the  peace  of  Lurope  and  espe¬ 
cially  of  Italy.  Innocent  V  effected  a  reconciliation 
between  Guelphs  and  Ghibellines  in  Italy  and  estab- 
8 


200 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


lished  peace  between  Pisa  and  Lucca.  Cardinal 
Frangipani, the  Pope’s  representative, became  known 
throughout  Italy  as  the  Prince  of  Peace.  Benedict 
XI,  while  Master  General  of  the  Order,  was  made 
a  member  of  a  most  important  embassy  which  had 
for  its  purpose  the  arranging  of  an  armistice  be¬ 
tween  Philip  IV  of  France  and  the  English  King 
Edward  I.  As  Pope,  he  established  peace  between 
the  Papacy  and  the  French  court. 

Not  a  few  of  the  great  reforms  accomplished  by 
the  Dominicans  were  due  to  the  fact  that  so  many 
of  the  Friars  Preachers  acted  as  confessors  to  the 
reigning  families  of  Europe.  During  the  Middle 
Ages  the  French  monarchy  sought  most  of  its  con¬ 
fessors  in  the  ranks  of  the  Order.  The  dukes  of 
Burgundy  and  the  kings  of  England  employed  them 
in  a  similar  capacity.  The  kings  of  Castile  and  of 
Spain  invariably  chose  their  spiritual  advisers  from 
the  ranks  of  the  Friars,  as  did  the  kings  of  Portugal. 
Consequently,  many  channels  of  great  influence 
were  open  to  them  through  which  they  directed 
their  benevolent  efforts  for  the  amelioration  of  the 
many  distressing  conditions  prevalent  in  medieval 
Europe.  The  thought  of  being  of  service  to  the 
bodies  as  well  as  to  the  souls  of  men  occupied  the 
minds  of  the  greatest  of  the  Order’s  saints  and 
scholars.  Thus,  Albert  the  Great  and  the  English¬ 
man,  John  of  St.  Giles,  a  former  professor  of  med¬ 
icine  at  the  University  of  Paris,  made  exhaustive 
researches  in  medicine,  herbs,  plants,  etc.,  for  the 
purpose  of  discovering  new  elements  of  medicinal 
value.  St.  Vincent  Ferrer  founded  orphanages  in 
almost  every  city  in  Spain,  and  multiplied  hospitals 
throughout  Spain  and  Brittany.  Not  only  did 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


201 


the  Dominicans  serve  the  normal  needs  of  afflicted 
humanity  by  the  establishment  of  hospitals  through¬ 
out  Europe,  but  in  the  fearful  epidemics  that 
scourged  the  Middle  Ages  they  ministered  in 
person,  like  their  illustrious  brothers,  St.  Anto¬ 
ninus  and  St.  Louis  Bertrand,  to  the  plague- 
stricken  of  their  respective  cities.  In  such  a 
crisis,  St.  Antoninus,  Florence’s  most  beloved  arch¬ 
bishop,  was  to  be  seen  leading  a  mule  laden  with 
everything  that  he  could  find  to  ease  the  sufferings 
and  alleviate  the  distress  of  those  who  had  fallen 
victims  of  the  plague. 

Of  St.  Antoninus  Pius  II  truly  said  that  “the 
hands  of  the  poor  were  the  depository  of  all  that  he 
possessed.”  He  converted  his  palace  into  a  common 
lodging  house  and  divided  up  his  gardens  into  plats 
in  which  the  poor  might  grow  their  vegetables.  One 
of  his  most  effective  and  enduring  works  was  the 
institution  of  a  society,  known  as  the  Buonomini  di 
San  Martino,  for  befriending  the  poor.  This  soci¬ 
ety,  founded  in  1441  in  the  Dominican  Convent  of 
St.  Mark,  was  made  up  of  twelve  of  the  leading  men 
of  Florence.  To  them  St.  Antoninus  announced  his 
plan  of  dividing  the  city  into  twelve  districts  and 
assigning  two  of  them  to  each  district  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  ministering  to  the  poor  in  their  district.  The 
alms  collected  were  not  to  be  invested  nor  spent  on 
office-rent,  salaries,  investigations  or  the  keeping  of 
records,  but  were  to  be  paid  out  directly  and  imme¬ 
diately  to  the  deserving  poor, especially  to  those  who 
were  ashamed  to  make  known  their  wants.  It  was 
an  admirably  planned  and  effectively  executed  work, 
and  its  continuance  for  over  four  hundred  years 
proves  the  value  of  its  service.  His  plan  for  the 


202 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


reformation  of  the  morals  of  Florence  must  have 
seemed  to  any  one  not  familiar  with  his  capacity  for 
achievement,  to  be  the  dream  of  a  visionary.  Yet 
before  long  it  had  been  so  fully  realized  that  blas¬ 
phemy,  gambling,  usury  and  other  disorders  had  be¬ 
come  entirely  a  thing  of  the  past.  So  completely 
did  he  heal  the  feuds  and  quarrels  of  its  citizens  that 
Pope  Pius  could  say  that  “all  enmities  were  ban¬ 
ished  out  of  the  city.” 

Among  all  the  great  reformers  given  to  the 
Church  none  stands  out  so  heroically  or  towers  so 
high  as  the  famous  Florentine  prior,  Savonarola. 
From  his  earliest  youth  he  cherished  high  ideals 
and  gave  evidence  of  the  strength  of  character  nec¬ 
essary  to  realize  them.  At  the  suggestion  of  the 
famous  scholar,  Picus  Mirandola,  he  was  invited  to 
Florence  by  Lorenzo  de  Medici.  Thus  were  brought 
into  contact,  and  eventually  into  conflict,  two  char¬ 
acters  as  different  in  their  tastes,  aims  and  manner 
of  life  as  two  personalities  could  possibly  be.  It  was 
not  long  before  Savonarola  was  elected  prior  of  St. 
Mark’s,  an  office  which  carried  with  it  considerable 
authority  and  influence  in  even  the  civic  affairs  of  the 
city.  At  the  time  of  his  death  the  community  at  St. 
Mark’s  numbered  two  hundred  religious  and  eighty 
novices,  among  whom  were  to  be  found  statesmen, 
scholars  and  former  courtiers.  So  great  was  the 
number  attracted  to  the  religious  life  by  the  preach¬ 
ing  and  example  of  Savonarola  that  the  Convent  of 
St.  Mark  had  to  be  enlarged  to  accommodate  them. 
Florence  was  at  this  time  the  fountain-head  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  Neo-paganism  of  the  Humanists 
flourished  here  in  every  department  of  the  arts. 
Through  the  channels  of  government  as  well  as  of 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


203 


art  and  literature  it  poured  its  corrupting  poison 
into  the  hearts  of  the  people.  In  the  form  of  pagan 
art  it  had  even  invaded  the  sanctuary.  Debauchery 
threw  off  its  natural  concomitants  of  darkness  and 
secrecy  and  brazenly  exhibited  itself  in  public  places. 
The  standards  of  public  decency  had  fallen  to  such 
a  deplorable  degree  that  the  morals  of  even  the 
school  children  were  in  grave  danger  of  being  cor¬ 
rupted.  Such  was  the  condition  of  affairs  that  con¬ 
fronted  Savonarola  on  his  entrance  into  Florence. 
This  saintly  character,  who  lived  only  for  God’s 
honor  and  glory  and  the  salvation  of  souls,  immedi¬ 
ately  entered  upon  the  herculean  task  of  cleaning 
out  the  Augean  stables  of  Florence.  From  the  pul¬ 
pit  of  St.  Mark’s  he  lashed  the  corruption  of  the 
people  with  fiery  eloquence.  In  his  holy  crusade  he 
was  no  respector  of  persons,  and  neither  dignity  of 
office  nor  rank  nor  station  served  to  shield  the  guilty 
from  his  burning  castigation.  None  more  than  Lor¬ 
enzo  de  Medici,  the  tyrant  of  Florence  and  the  abet¬ 
tor  of  its  immorality,  felt  the  weight  of  his  denun¬ 
ciation.  The  fact  that  he  was  a  generous  patron  of 
the  convent  of  St.  Mark  did  not  save  him  from  the 
condemnation  of  its  fearless  prior.  In  his  sermons 
Savonarola  attacked  the  false  conceptions  and  the 
degrading  use  of  art  which  so  powerfully  contrib¬ 
uted  to  the  decline  of  morals,  and  vividly  set  forth 
in  opposition  to  its  revolting  naturalism  the  true 
ideal  of  spiritual  beauty.  He  extolled  the  civilizing 
and  Christianizing  influence  of  true  art  and  vehe¬ 
mently  protested  against  its  prostitution  to  the  ends 
of  sensualism  and  naturalism.  So  irrefutable  were 
his  statements  and  so  moving  the  eloquence  with 
which  they  were  expressed  that  many  of  the  artists 


204 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  Florence  brought  to  him  their  objectionable 
paintings  and  destroyed  them  in  his  presence,  prom¬ 
ising  never  again  to  offend  against  the  true  spirit 
and  purpose  of  art.  Many  of  them,  captivated  by 
his  holiness  of  life  and  his  sublime  conception  of 
beauty,  entered  the  Order  to  consecrate  their  talents 
directly  and  exclusively  to  God.  Among  these  was 
the  famous  painter,  Fra  Bartolomeo,  the  instructor 
of  Raphael. 

No  less  effective  was  his  crusade  against  the  lax¬ 
ity  of  morals  among  the  pleasure-loving  Florentines. 
So  profound  was  the  influence  of  his  campaign 
against  the  revolting  sensualism  of  his  age  that  even 
the  school  children  petitioned  the  government  to 
protect  them  against  the  unclean  spirit  of  the  times. 
The  public  carnivals  held  on  special  occasions,  which 
were  orgies  of  debauchery  that  outraged  public 
decency,  became  religious  pageants  depicting 
eternal  truths.  Improprieties  of  dress,  suggest¬ 
ing  those  of  our  own  day,  were  abolished  and  con¬ 
formity  to  the  standards  of  Christian  modesty  re¬ 
stored.  In  the  reform  carnival  of  1497  all  the  van¬ 
ities  of  the  sensuous  Florentines  and  their  adjuncts 
of  sin  were  gathered  together  in  the  Piazza  dei  Sig¬ 
nori  and  burned.  Priceless  tapestries,  defiled  by  un¬ 
clean  representations,  paintings  and  sculpture  that 
outraged  modesty,  books  that  reeked  with  inde¬ 
cency  and  the  poison  of  false  teaching,  cards  and 
dice  that  squandered  the  earnings  of  the  poor,  false 
hair,  paints,  powders  and  other  artificialities  with 
which  women  concealed  their  physical  deficiencies, 
masks,  costumes  and  other  things  pertaining  to  the 
pagan  carnivals — all  were  thrown  by  their  penitent 
owners  upon  the  colossal  pyramid  which  was 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


205 


quickly  given  over  to  the  flames.  Even  the  form  of 
government  was  changed  to  meet  the  political  and 
economic  teachings  of  Savonarola  and  took  the 
form  of  a  theocratic  democracy  whose  supreme 
ruler  was  Christ,  and  whose  social  and  political  in¬ 
stitutions  and  organic  law  were  firmly  founded  on 
the  teachings  of  the  Saviour.  Such  was  Savonarola, 
the  great  Dominican  reformer,  whose  tragic  end 
proved  the  sincerity  of  his  purpose  and  his  uncon¬ 
querable  devotion  to  the  cause  of  Catholic  reform. 

There  is  no  more  inspiring  story  in  the  history  of 
the  settlement  of  the  New  World  than  the  Order’s 
championship  of  the  rights  of  the  American  Indian. 
A  race  by  no  means  robust,  and  unaccustomed  to 
toil,  they  fell  easy  victims  to  the  Spanish  explorers’ 
insatiable  greed  and  lust  for  power.  To  this  fact 
Prescott,  by  no  means  addicted  to  the  praise  of 
Catholics,  bears  generous  testimony.  “The  breth¬ 
ren  of  St.  Dominic,”  he  says,  “stood  forth  as  the 
avowed  champions  of  the  Indians  on  all  occasions 
and  showed  themselves  devoted  to  the  cause  of 
freedom  in  the  New  World.”  So  well  known  was 
their  sympathy  for  and  efforts  in  behalf  of  the  In¬ 
dians  that  the  most  illustrious  of  all  their  defenders, 
Bartholomew  de  Las  Casas,  joined  the  Dominicans 
in  order  that  he  might  consecrate  his  life  to  the  de¬ 
fence  of  the  aborigines.  That  his  efforts  in  their 
behalf  were  fully  approved  by  his  newly-found 
brethren  in  the  Old  W  orld,  as  well  as  in  the  New, 
we  may  infer  from  the  words  of  Hallam  who  says 
that  “Dominic  Soto,  always  inflexibly  on  the  side  of 
right,  had  already  sustained  by  his  authority  the 
noble  enthusiasm  of  Las  Casas.”  So  insistently  did 
this  great  champion  of  the  oppressed  keep  before 


206  SAINT  DOMINIC  AND  „ 

the  Spanish  Crown  the  wrongs  of  this  enslaved  peo¬ 
ple,  and  so  effectively  did  he  present  their  right  to 
freedom  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  that  in  1515 
he  was  nominated  Protector  General  of  the  Indians. 
Never  were  the  functions  of  any  earthly  office  more 
conscientiously  and  enthusiastically  filled  than  those 
of  the  office  of  Protector  General  of  the  Indians  by 
its  first  incumbent.  Tirelessly  he  combated  the 
boundless  greed  of  the  Spanish  adventurers  who 
exploited  the  untutored  savages  for  their  own 
profit.  The  powerful  interests  arrayed  against  his 
benevolent  efforts  could  not  force  him  to  abate  his 
zeal  in  behalf  of  his  helpless  charges  one  jot  or  tit¬ 
tle.  When  the  authorities  in  America  could  not,  or 
would  not,  afford  him  the  assistance  he  sought,  he 
personally  took  appeal  directly  to  the  Spanish 
Throne.  Seven  times  he  crossed  the  ocean  to  plead 
the  cause  of  the  Indians  at  court.  At  last  he  suc¬ 
ceeded,  though  with  the  help  of  a  brother  Domin¬ 
ican,  Garcias  de  Loaysa,  President  of  the  Indian 
Council,  in  having  a  code  of  laws  drafted  “having 
for  its  express  object,”  as  Prescott  tells  us,  “the  en¬ 
franchisement  of  the  oppressed  race.”  “And,”  he 
adds,  “in  the  wisdom  and  humanity  of  its  provisions 
it  is  easy  to  recognize  the  hand  of  the  Protector  of 
the  Indians.”  Up  to  the  last  he  persisted  in  refusing 
the  sacraments  to  those  who  held  the  natives  in 
slavery  contrary  to  the  provisions  of  this  code.  In 
1544  he  was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Chiapa  and  with 
the  increased  influence  which  his  episcopal  office 
gave  him  continued  his  strenuous  defence  of  the 
Indians  in  the  face  of  the  greatest  opposition.  To 
him  alone  it  was  due  that  slavery  found  no  foothold 
in  South  America  as  it  did  on  the  northern  continent. 


207 


the  order  of  preachers 

In  the  words  of  Sir  Arthur  Helps,  “his  was  one  of 
those  few  lives  that  are  beyond  biography,  and  re¬ 
quire  a  history  to  be  written  in  order  to  illustrate 
them.  His  last  work  was  to  write  a  voluminous 
history  of  the  West  Indies,  which  is  the  most  reli¬ 
able  authority  on  the  events  of  the  New  World  up 
to  the  year  1522. 

Art 

As  we  have  already  seen  so  often,  every  medium, 
of  whatever  kind,  that  was  capable  of  giving  expres¬ 
sion  to  religious  truth  was  eagerly  seized  by  the 
Dominicans  to  further  the  ends  of  their  apostolate. 
Among  the  many  mediums  not  necessarily  allied 
with  religious  propaganda,  which  the  Order  con¬ 
verted  to  this  end,  not  the  least  serviceable  was 
Christian  art.  Only  too  often  a  most  effective 
means  of  accomplishing  spiritual  ruin,  in  the  hands 
of  the  Friars  Preachers  it  served  the  cause  of  relig¬ 
ion  by  presenting  in  concrete  form  to  the  unlet¬ 
tered  masses  of  the  Middle  Ages  the  eternal  truths 
of  God.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  the  Dominican 
Order  created  a  school  of  religious  art,  influenced 
art  and  inspired  artists  by  establishing  higher  stand¬ 
ards,  truer  ideals  and  nobler  ends  for  their  genius. 
To  the  Dominican  mind  it  seemed  there  could  be  no 
nobler  consecration  of  art  than  its  application  to  the 
temples  of  God,  themselves  already  consecrated  to 
the  cause  of  religion.  The  motto  of  the  Order  is 
“Truth”;  and  truth  and  beauty  are  convertible 
terms.  It  was  but  natural,  therefore,  that  in  their 
tireless  diffusion  of  truth  the  Friars  Preachers 
should  seize  upon  the  beauty  of  religious  art  to  give 
fuller  and  more  tangible  expression  to  the  truths  of 


208 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


salvation.  In  this  manner  they  became  not  only  the 
patrons  but  the  creators  of  art.  ‘‘The  Dominicans,” 
says  Cesare  Cantu,  “soon  had  in  the  chief  towns  of 
Italy  magnificent  monasteries  and  superb  temples, 
veritable  wonders  of  art.  Among  others  may  be 
mentioned:  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  Novella,  at 
Florence ;  Santa  Maria  Sopra  Minerva,  at  Rome ; 
St.  John  and  St.  Paul,  at  Venice;  St.  Nicholas,  at 
Treviso;  St.  Dominic,  at  Naples,  at  Perugia  and  at 
Prato ;  the  splendid  tomb  of  the  founder,  at  Bo¬ 
logna  ;  the  Church  of  St.  Catherine,  at  Pisa ;  St. 
Eustorgius  and  Sta.  Maria  delle  Grazie,  at  Milan ; 
and  several  others  remarkable  for  rich  simplicity 
and  of  which  the  architects  were  mostly  monks” 
(Dominicans). 

The  greatest  glory  of  the  Order  in  the  field  of 
Christian  art  was,  of  course,  Giovanni  da  Fiesole, 
commonly  known  as  Fra  Angelico.  He  is  the  earli¬ 
est  as  well  as  the  most  famous  among  the  painters 
of  the  Dominican  school  of  which  he  was  the 
founder.  An  ideal  religious  among  his  brethren, 
he  was  also  an  immortal  among  artists.  A  mod¬ 
ern  critic  has  said  of  him  that  painting  was  his 
ordinary  prayer.  Certain  it  is  that  in  his  painting 
he  but  visualized  his  long  and  earnest  meditations. 
The  glorious  things  he  beheld  with  the  eye  of  the 
spirit  in  his  hours  of  prayer  he  reproduced  upon  his 
canvas  clothed  in  the  colors  of  the  rainbow.  In¬ 
deed,  the  great  Michael  Angelo,  whose  own  brother 
was  a  Dominican,  said  of  Fra  Angelico’s  picture  of 
the  Annunciation :  “No  man  could  have  designed 
such  figures  had  he  not  first  been  to  heaven  to  see 
them.”  We  are  told  that  he  never  took  up  his  brush 
without  first  having  recourse  to  prayer.  So  intense 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


209 


was  the  religous  feeling  that  dominated  him  when 
he  stood  before  his  easel  that,  as  the  outlines  of  the 
crucifixion  began  to  appear  upon  his  canvas,  his  eyes 
were  suffused  with  tears.  Nor  would  he,  we  are 
told,  consent  to  paint  Christ  and  His  Blessed  Mother 
in  any  other  posture  than  upon  his  knees.  Under 
such  circumstances  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at 
that  his  pictures  contain  a  supernatural  atmosphere 
lacking  in  the  religious  paintings  of  even  the  great¬ 
est  artists  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  was  no  slavish 
imitator  of  his  predecessors.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  dar¬ 
ing  innovator  who  blazed  his  own  path  and  created 
his  own  style.  Under  his  magic  touch  the  old  sub¬ 
jects  of  religious  art  were  transfused  with  the  light 
of  heaven  and  clothed  with  the  gorgeous  draperies 
of  his  own  colorful  imagination.  Dante,  it  may  be 
said,  with  his  “sweet  new  style”  translated  the 
Summa  of  St.  Thomas  into  the  verse  of  the  “Divine 
Comedy,”  while  Fra  Angelico  visualized  the  lumi¬ 
nous  principles  of  one  who,  like  himself,  was  called 
“angelic,”  and  the  sublime  imagery  of  the  master 
poet,  and  blended  both  in  one  immortal  symphony 
of  form  and  color.  Thus  in  the  glorious  trilogy  of 
theology,  poetry  and  art  the  Friars  Preachers  fur¬ 
nished  two  of  its  master  builders  and  inspired  the 

third. 

Baccio  della  Porta,  better  known  in  the  annals  of 
art  as  Fra  Bartolomeo,  acquired  fame  as  a  painter 
second  only  to  Fra  Angelico.  His  work  was  done  in 
that  golden  age  of  art,  the  Italian  Renaissance.  The 
friend  and  follower  of  Savonarola,  he  put  on  the 
habit  of  the  Order  in  the  convent  of  Prato  the  morn¬ 
ing  after  the  great  reformer  met  his  tragic  fate. 
Soon  after  his  profession  he  was  sent  to  ihe  convent 


210 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


at  Florence  where  his  best  work  as  a  painter  of  re¬ 
ligious  subjects  was  done.  Rosini  called  him  “the 
star  of  the  Florentine  school.”  Not  his  least  notable 
contribution  to  art  was  the  influence  he  exercised  on 
the  great  Raphael.  When  the  latter,  as  a  young 
man,  came  to  Florence  to  study  the  works  of  Mich¬ 
ael  Angelo  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci  he  placed  himself 
under  the  instruction  of  Fra  Bartolomeo,  as  the 
nearest  to  them  in  his  knowledge  of  coloring.  More 
than  one  of  Raphael’s  masterpieces  is  the  fruit  of 
their  collaboration. 

In  the  art  of  glass-painting,  as  in  other  depart¬ 
ments  of  art,  the  Dominicans  founded  their  own 
school  several  of  whose  members  achieved  immortal 
fame  in  their  cloistral  studios.  That  their  work  was 
not  done  for  earthly  fame  or  glory  is  witnessed  by  the 
fact  that  so  little  is  known  of  their  personalities  and 
that  their  love  of  prayer  was  equalled  only  by  their 
love  of  beauty.  Indeed,  one  of  these  artists,  James 
of  Ulm,  a  lay-brother  of  Bologna,  has  been  formally 
beatified  by  the  Church.  When  he  died  in  the  clos¬ 
ing  years  of  the  fifteenth  century  he  left  behind  him, 
firmly  established  in  its  efficiency  and  fame,  the 
school  of  glass-painting  which  he  himself  had 
founded.  Another  member  of  the  Order,  William 
of  Marcillat,  who  died  in  1529,  was  regarded  as  the 
greatest  painter  on  glass  that  had  ever  lived.  Thus  it 
came  to  pass  that  while  the  Dominican  Fathers 
preached  with  apostolic  zeal  from  the  pulpits  of 
Europe,  the  humble  and  all-unknown  brothers,  re¬ 
producing  their  own  simple  meditations  in  the  un¬ 
fading  glory  of  form  and  color,  preached  no  less  elo¬ 
quently  from  the  storied  windows  of  many  a  chapel, 
church  and  minster  of  medieval  Europe.  Long  since 


THE  ORDER  OF  FREACHERS 


211 


the  eloquent  tongues  of  these  clerical  brethren  were 
hushed  in  the  silence  of  the  grave.  But  the  lessons 
taught  by  thir  humble  auxiliaries  in  the  universal 
language  of  mankind  are  still  retold  with  undimin¬ 
ished  interest  from  century  to  century.  From  the 
emblazoned  windows  of  many  an  ancient  edifice  in 
Germany,  England,  France  and  Italy  they  still  tell 
the  glory  of  Christian  virtue  and  its  incomparable 
reward. 

In  architecture  no  less  than  in  painting  the  Friars 
Preachers  established  a  well-founded  claim  to  a  con¬ 
spicuous  place  among  the  makers  of  art.  In  the 
uprearing  of  the  magnificent  churches  of  the  Order 
the  lay-brothers  again  outstripped  the  Fathers  in 
the  magnificence  of  their  achievements.  Among  the 
most  famous  of  Dominican  churches  that  of  Santa 
Maria  Novella,  at  Florence,  is  best  known.  Built  in 
1278,  it  was  entirely  the  work  of  Dominican  lay- 
brothers.  None  but  members  of  the  Order  partici¬ 
pated  in  its  construction.  Fra  Sisto  and  Fra  Ristoro 
were  its  architects  and  under  their  able  direction 
this  magnificent  temple  of  Christian  art  was 
erected  to  the  honor  and  glory  of  God.  So  enamored 
of  its  chaste  beauty  was  Michael  Angelo  that  he  was 
wont  to  call  it  his  “gentle  and  beautiful  bride.” 
Within  the  walls  of  this  splendid  edifice  Cimabue  as 
a  boy,  studying  its  glorious  frescoes,  received  the 
inspiration  which  made  him  one  of  the  immortals  of 
medieval  art.  And,  as  if  in  poetic  justice,  it  was 
hither  his  famous  masterpiece,  “The  Madonna,” 
eventually  came  to  find  its  final  resting  place.  Un¬ 
der  the  skillful  direction  of  the  famous  Father  Pas- 
savanti,  Orgagna  and  Memmi  multiplied  their  mag¬ 
nificent  frescoes  till  Santa  Maria  Novella  became  a 
veritable  museum  of  Christian  art. 


212 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


V 


In  Germany,  France  and  Spain  the  Order  up- 
reared  convents  and  churches  which  were  monu¬ 
ments  of  architecture.  Brother  Diemar  built  the 
Dominican  church  at  Ratisbon  in  the  last  quarter 
of  the  thirteenth  century;  while  at  the  same  time 
Brother  Volmar  exercised  his  genius  as  an  archi¬ 
tect  in  Alsace  and  especially  at  Colmar.  To  the  gen¬ 
ius  of  Brother  Humbert  is  due  the  architectural 
beauty  of  the  church  and  convent  at  Bonn.  The  Do¬ 
minican  church  and  convent  at  Batalha  in  Portugal 
in  the  opinion  of  competent  critics  are  probably  the 
finest  ever  possessed  by  a  religious  Order.  Nor  is 
England  destitute  of  witnesses  to  the  skill  of  Do¬ 
minican  architects.  If  we  may  credit  tradition,  the 
concert  hall  of  St.  Andrew,  in  Norwich,  was  once  a 
Dominican  church  planned  and  executed  by  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Order.  The  wonderfully  beautiful  lan¬ 
tern-topped  tower  of  St.  Nicholas  at  Newcastle  is 
also  credited  to  the  constructive  genius  of  the  breth¬ 
ren.  The  Dominican  Church  of  the  Minerva,  the 
only  Gothic  church  in  Rome  and  one  of  the  most  no¬ 
table  edifices  of  the  Eternal  City,  was  designed  by 
two  Florentine  Dominicans.  This  church,  as  well  as 
that  of  the  Dominicans  at  Bologna,  was  successfully 
restored  in  our  own  day  by  Girolamo  Bianchedi,  a 
Dominican  lay-brother. 

More  than  one  of  the  famous  bridges  of  Europe 
is  the  work  of  Dominican  engineers.  The  Rialto 
of  Venice,  for  instance,  was  built  by  Fra  Giacondo 
of  Verona,  architect  royal  to  Louis  XII  of  France. 
Under  a  commission  from  the  French  King,  Louis 
XIV,  the  Port  Royal  of  Paris  was  built  by  the  Do¬ 
minican  architect,  Frere  Frangois  Romain  of  Ghent. 
The  stone  bridge  across  the  Aar  in  Bonn,  for  cen- 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


213 


turies  the  most  beautiful  in  the  city,  was  built  by 
Brother  Humbert  who  also  built  the  Dominican 
church  and  convent  of  that  city. 

The  Order  was  not  content  to  consecrate  to  the 
cause  of  Christian  art  those  of  its  members  who 
were  naturally  talented  in  that  way,  but  actively 
and  systematically  cultivated  the  love  of  art  and 
exercised  a  profound  influence  over  it  to  the  end 
that  it  might  reflect  the  highest  possible  ideals  of 
beauty.  No  greater  patron  of  art  existed  among 
the  Dominican  brethren  than  Blessed  John  Dominic, 
afterwards  Cardinal  of  St.  Sixtus.  He  himself  was 
an  artist  of  no  small  merit,  and  during  his  life  at 
Santa  Maria  Novella  he  acquired  considerable  fame 
as  a  miniaturist.  In  all  the  Dominican  convents  of 
men  and  women  over  which  he  exercised  any  juris¬ 
diction  he  endeavored  to  stimulate  a  love  of  painting 
among  their  members.  This  interest  in  art  was,  of 
course,  to  be  dedicated  to  the  ends  of  religion,  such 
as  illuminating  choral  books  and  missals.  The  same 
was  true  of  Savonarola.  In  every  convent  in  which 
he  exercised  any  influence  he  awakened  a  lively  in¬ 
terest  in  painting  and  modelling  according  to  prin¬ 
ciples  which  are  now  recognized  by  the  artistic 
world  as  essential  for  the  highest  expression  of 
beauty.  The  lay-brothers  were  exhorted  to  develop 
any  talent  they  might  have  in  sculpture,  painting 
or  architecture.  During  his  incumbency  of  St. 
Mark’s  he  received  into  the  Order  some  of  the  fore¬ 
most  artists  of  Florence.  Within  the  cloister  walls 
of  that  famous  old  convent  their  art  was  passed 
through  the  alembic  of  religion,  and  thus  purified 
and  supernaturalized,  it  was  consecrated  to  the 
ggj*yjc£  of  God.  Nor  was  the  interest  of  the  briars 


214 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Preachers  in  matters  of  art  confined  to  their  own 
community.  They  freely  patronized  the  greatest 
painters  of  their  times.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that 
Cimabue’s  famous  Madonna  was  brought  to  the  Do¬ 
minican  Church  of  Santa  Maria  Novella  in  Florence, 
and  that  Leonardo  da  Vinci  painted  his  immortal 
“Last  Supper”  on  the  refectory  wall  of  the  Domin¬ 
ican  Convent  of  Santa  Maria  della  Grazie,  at  Milan. 

We  have  already  noticed  at  some  length  Savona¬ 
rola’s  influence  on  the  art  of  his  day.  He  found  it 
dedicated  to  paganism,  characterized  by  sensuality 
and  supported  chiefly  by  the  rich  profligates  of 
Florence.  Against  all  this  he  inveighed  with  burn¬ 
ing  eloquence.  To  their  very  faces  he  denounced 
the  Medici  for  their  encouragement  of  licentious¬ 
ness  in  art,  vividly  portrayed  its  demoralizing  influ¬ 
ence  on  the  people  of  the  city,  and  then  expounded 
the  sublime  principles,  ideals  and  purposes  of  art  in 
the  light  of  religious  truth.  In  the  end  he  succeeded 
in  purifying  and  christianizing  it  and  consecrating 
it  to  the  cause  of  religion.  Nor  did  his  untimely  end 
terminate  his  influence  in  the  realm  of  art ;  for  in 
the  persons  of  his  artist-converts  that  influence 
lived  and  served  the  ends  of  virtue  and  religion. 
Especially  in  the  person  of  his  Dominican  brother, 
Fra  Bartolomeo,  the  master  of  Raphael  and  the 
friend  of  Michael  Angelo,  it  continued  to  live  and 
serve  the  cause  of  religious  truth.  It  has  been  truly 
said  of  Fra  Bartolomeo  that  “he  influenced  all  that 
was  best  in  Venice,  Florence  and  Rome,  expounding 
in  color  what  Savonarola  had  taught  with  the  elo¬ 
quence  of  his  lips.” 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


215 


In  Other  Fields  of  Service 

In  order  to  keep  the  present  work  within  the  lim¬ 
its  originally  set  for  it,  we  can  give  only  a  passing 
notice  to  many  fields  of  endeavor  in  which  the  Fri¬ 
ars  Preachers  labored  for  God’s  honor  and  glory  and 
the  salvation  of  souls.  As  a  result  of  the  confidence 
the  Church  placed  in  the  Order  she  drew  heavily 
upon  such  of  its  members  as  were  capable  of  filling 
her  highest  offices  and  discharging  the  duties  of  her 
most  important  commissions.  Consequently,  as 
early  as  1250  Matthew  of  Paris  could  say:  “The 
Friars  Preachers,  impelled  by  obedience,  are  the 
fiscal  agents,  the  nuncios  and  even  the  legates  of 
the  Pope/' 

To  the  Papacy  the  Order  has  given  four  popes — 
Innocent  V,  Benedict  XI,  Pius  V  and  Benedict  XIII. 
Of  these  Benedict  XI  has  been  solemnly  beatified 
and  Pius  V  canonized.  In  fact,  he  was  the  last  pope 
to  be  elevated  to  the  altars  of  the  Church.  Eighty- 
one  Dominicans  have  been  called  to  the  College  of 
Cardinals.  Four  Dominicans  were  Presidents  of 
General  Councils,  twenty-five  Legates  a  Latere, 
eight  Apostolic  Nuncios  and  one  Prince-Elector  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  From  the  ranks  of  the 
Order  the  Church  has  drawn  twenty-three  of  its 
patriarchs,  over  six  hundred  archbishops  and  more 
than  fifteen  hundred  bishops.  From  the  days  of  the 
founder  himself  the  office  of  Master  of  the  Sacred 
Palace  has  been  filled  uninterruptedly  by  members 
of  the  Order.  Upon  the  institution  of  the  Inquisi¬ 
tion  Gregory  IX  turned  over  its  administration  to 
the  Friars  Preachers.  None  guarded  more  jeal¬ 
ously  the  rights  of  the  Papacy  than  the  sons  of  St. 


216 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Dominic.  Cardinal  John  Dominic  was  the  intrepid 
champion  of  the  legitimate  Pope,  Gregory  XIII,  at 
the  end  of  the  Great  Schism ;  and  in  his  name  re¬ 
signed  the  Papacy  at  the  Council  of  Constance.  The 
famous  Dominican  Cardinal  John  Torquemada  bril¬ 
liantly  defended  the  rights  of  the  Papacy  at  the 
Council  of  Basle.  It  was  the  great  scriptural 
scholar,  Cardinal  Hugh  of  St.  Cher,  whom  the  Pope 
sent  to  Germany  to  persuade  the  Germans  to  accept 
William  of  Holland  after  the  deposition  of  Frederick 
II.  From  the  foundation  of  the  Roman  Congrega¬ 
tions  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  titulars  of  the 
Commissariat  of  the  Holy  Office  and  the  Secretary 
of  the  Index  have  always  been  chosen  from  the 
members  of  the  Order.  The  office  of  Consultor  to 
the  Holy  Office  also  belonged  by  right  to  the  Do¬ 
minican  Master  General. 

The  influence  of  the  Friars  Preachers  was  not  in¬ 
frequently  exercised  in  the  foundation  or  reforma¬ 
tion  of  other  religious  orders  or  congregations.  St. 
Raymond  of  Pennafort  was  one  of  the  three  to 
whom  the  Blessed  Virgin  appeared  and  communi¬ 
cated  her  desire  that  an  order  be  founded  for  the 
redemption  of  captives  among  the  Moors.  On  the 
feast  of  St.  Lawrence,  1223,  St.  Raymond  led  St. 
Peter  of  Nolasco — the  founder  of  this  order — to  the 
cathedral  at  Bologna,  where  the  latter,  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  the  bishop  and  king,  took  the  usual  vows  of 
religion,  to  which  was  added  a  third — to  devote  his 
life,  substance  and  liberty  to  the  ransoming  of  cap¬ 
tives.  In  this  manner  was  the  Order  of  Mercy 
called  into  existence.  The  constitutions  of  the  new 
institute  were  drawn  up  by  St.  Raymond,  who  has 
always  been  considered  its  second  founder.  Before 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


217 


Pope  Pius  IV  would  confirm  the  rule  of  the  Barna- 
bites  of  St.  Paul  he  ordered  that  it  be  submitted  for 
examination  and  revision  to  the  Dominican, Leonard 
de  Marini,  papal  nuncio  at  the  Council  of  Trent. 
To  Bernard  Geraldi  was  committed  the  task  of  re¬ 
vising  the  rule  of  the  Order  of  Grandmont,  to  which 
he  was  appointed  visitator  by  Honorius  IV  in  1282. 
Again,  it  was  on  the  recommendation  of  St.  Peter 
Martyr,  the  heroic  Dominican  inquisitor  of  Lom¬ 
bardy,  that  the  Order  of  Servites  was  confirmed. 
At  his  suggestion  they  adopted  the  active  rather 
than  the  contemplative  life.  The  Servites  number 
him  among  their  chief  protectors  and  patron  saints. 
In  the  revision  of  the  Carmelite  rule,  the  Dominican 
Cardinal  Hugh  of  St.  Cher,  whose  monumental 
labors  we  have  already  noticed,  was  appointed  to 
be  its  interpreter.  Three  hundred  years  later,  when 
the  Dominicans  again  took  a  notable  part  in  the 
reformation  of  the  Carmelite  rule,  St.  Theresa  could 
say :  “We  observe  the  rule  of  Our  Lady  of  Mt.  Car¬ 
mel,  without  any  mutilation,  as  it  was  ordained  by 
Cardinal  Hugo  of  Santa  Sabina  and  confirmed  by 
Pope  Innocent  IV.” 

The  “imperial  spirit  of  government”  which  Cardi¬ 
nal  Newman  attributed  to  St.  Dominic,  was  in  a 
measure  handed  down  by  the  holy  patriarch  to  his 
spiritual  children.  On  more  than  one  occasion  their 
services  were  sought  by  civil  as  well  as  ecclesias¬ 
tical  bodies  for  the  purpose  of  drafting  laws,  draw¬ 
ing  constitutions  and,  in  an  advisory  capacity,  for 
administering  governments.  Speaking  of  their  own 
form  of  government,  the  Protestant  writer  Barker 
says  in  his  work,  “The  Dominican  Order  and  Convo¬ 
cation”:  “The  Dominicans  had  availed  themselves 


218 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


of  that  possibility  (institution  development)  and  the 
vogue  and  the  prestige  which  this  compact  and  ad¬ 
mirably  organized  community  enjoyed  in  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century  both  with  statesmen  like  de  Mont- 
fort  and  prelates  like  Langton  (father  of  Magna 
Charta)  would  tend  to  the  spread  of  its  institutions. 
Here  was  an  approved  type — and  it  is  the  law  of 
human  nature  that  the  approved  type  should  be  at 
once  imitated.  The  majority  of  the  religious  orders 
of  the  thirteenth  century  followed  quite  closely  Do¬ 
minican  legislation,  and  the  Church  considered  it  the 
typical  rule  for  new  foundations/’  The  same  author 
attributes  the  beginning  of  convocation  in  the 
Church  in  England  to  the  advent  of  the  Dominicans, 
with  their  representative  form  of  government. 
Simon  de  Montfort  and  Archbishop  Stephen  Lang¬ 
ton,  through  their  friendship  for  the  Dominicans,  be¬ 
came  acquainted  with  the  methods  of  convocation 
in  the  Order  and,  realizing  their  advantages,  intro¬ 
duced  them  into  the  administration  of  the  diocese 
of  Canterbury.  So  firm  and  comprehensive  was  St. 
Thomas’  grasp  upon  the  philosophy  of  legislation 
that  at  the  request  of  the  King  of  Cyprus  he  wrote 
a  work  entitled  “Concerning  the  King  and  the  King¬ 
dom.”  At  the  invitation  of  the  Countess  of  Flanders 
he  wrote  a  treatise  entitled  “Concerning  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  of  Subjects.”  We  have  already  seen  how 
the  cities  of  all  Lombardy  placed  their  statutes  in 
the  hands  of  the  Dominicans  for  revision  and  such 
changes  as  they  might  deem  necessary.  At  the  re¬ 
quest  of  the  Florentine  government  Savonarola 
wrote  a  dissertation  on  the  administration  and  gov¬ 
ernment  of  the  city  of  Florence.  Father  Justin  de 
Poro  was  so  eminent  in  his  knowledge  of  law  that 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


219 


he  was  consulted  by  the  Argentinians  in  the  draw¬ 
ing  up  of  their  constitutions. 

The  reader  will  bear  in  mind  that  the  names  and 
facts  cited  in  this  third  part  are  in  no  wise  intended 
to  be  an  exhaustive  list  of  the  activities  and  accom¬ 
plishments  of  the  Order  of  St.  Dominic.  Thev  have 

J 

been  selected  for  notice  because  they  seemed  to  the 
writer  typical  of  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  the  Order. 
Did  the  limit  we  have  set  for  ourselves  permit  they 
might  easily  be  paralleled  by  innumerable  others 
equally  worthy  of  mention  and  praise. 

Such  in  the  history  of  seven  hundred  years  is  the 
Order  of  Preachers  instituted  by  the  holy  patriarch 
St.  Dominic.  It  was  Lacordaire  who  said  that 
monks  and  oaks  alike  are  immortal.  And  certainly 
it  would  seem  that  this  statement  has  been  verified  in 
the  Order  of  which  the  great  preacher  was  himself 
a  most  illustrious  member.  Through  schisms  which 
rent  the  Church  itself  in  twain  it  has  come  down  the 
centuries  practically  alone,  of  all  the  older  orders, 
untorn  and  undivided.  This  does  not  mean,  how¬ 
ever,  that  it  did  not  share  the  vicissitudes  which  the 
Church  experienced  in  the  political  and  religious  up¬ 
heavals  of  these  seven  hundred  years.  The  so- 
called  Reformation  deprived  it  of  hundreds  of  con¬ 
vents  while  it  furnished  it  with  hundreds  of  martyrs. 
The  French  Revolution  utterly  destroyed  all  the 
provinces  in  France.  But  while  they  might  destroy 
its  outward  form  and  substance  in  this  country  or 
that,  neither  heretic  nor  infidel  could  touch  its 
deathless  spirit.  Crushed  to  earth,  here  and  there,  it 
was  sure  to  rise  and  flourish  elsewhere  ;  and  even 
from  the  midst  of  its  own  ashes,  phoenix-like,  it  rose 
with  renewed  youth  and  courage  to  serve  anew  the 


220 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


cause  of  truth  and  virtue.  It  is  ancient,  as  Lacor- 
daire  says,  but  not  antiquated.  Today,  after  seven 
centuries  of  persecutions,  calumnies,  banishments 
and  every  kind  of  vicissitude,  it  is  still  spreading 
over  the  face  of  the  earth  and  waxes  stronger  day 
by  day.  Its  youthful  spirit,  its  flexibility,  its  ability 
to  adapt  itself  to  ever-changing  times  and  customs, 
its  fidelity  to  its  original  purposes,  bid  fair  to  per¬ 
petuate  its  saving  mission  as  long  as  the  Church 
needs  its  zealous  apostolate  to  preach  Christ,  and 
Him  crucified,  to  the  wayward  souls  of  men. 


APPENDIX 


V 


Letter  of 

POPE  BENEDICT  XV 

To  the  Most  Reverend  Father  Master  Louis 

Theissling 

Master  General  of  the  Dominican  Order 
On  the  occasion  of  the  Seventh  Centenary  of  the 
Confirmation  of  the  Order. 

Beloved  Son,  Health  and  Apostolic  Benediction : 

I 

At  the  congress  of  Dominican  Tertiaries  held  at 
Florence  three  years  ago,  at  which  We  and  many 
other  Bishops  were  present,  it  was  decided  with  our 
entire  approval  and  advice,  that  another  congress  of 
the  same  kind,  but  of  far  greater  solemnity,  should 
be  held  at  Bologna  during  the  solemn  festivities  that 
were  shortly  to  be  observed  in  memory  of  the  sev¬ 
enth  centenary  of  the  confirmation  of  the  Domin¬ 
ican  Order.  Little  did  We  then  suspect  what  the 
decrees  of  God  had  in  store  for  Our  unworthiness 
and  what  Pie  so  soon  was  to  bestow  upon  Us ;  but 
certain  personal  and  special  reasons  seemed  to 
prompt  Us  to  honor  the  Institute  and  the  memory 
of  the  most  holy  Patriarch  St.  Dominic,  since  We 
were,  so  to  speak,  the  defenders  and  guardians  of 
his  sacred  ashes,  and  since,  moreover,  We  venerate 
among  those  of  Dominic’s  sons  who  have  been  raised 
to  the  altars  of  the  Church  a  member  of  Our  own 
family.  But  now,  since  by  the  will  of  God  it  hap¬ 
pens  that  at  the  approach  of  this  centenary  We  find 
Ourselves  no  longer  in  the  Seat  of  St.  Petronius, 


224 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


but  in  the  very  Chair  of  the  Prince  of  the  Apostles, 
therefore  is  it  seemly  that  We  should  take  into 
account  the  enduring  benefits  in  behalf  of  the 
Church  due  to  the  Dominican  Order  rather  than  any 
private  ties  of  Our  own,  and  that  We  should  give 
some  singular  proof  of  apostolic  charity  towards 
this  illustrious  Order. 

Our  predecessor  Honorius  III  seemed,  indeed, 
divinely  illuminated  when  he  foretold  the  glories  of 
the  Dominican  family.  For  on  December  22,  1216, 
when  he  confirmed  the  Order  founded  nine  years 
before,  he  again  addressed  apostolic  letters  to  the 
holy  Founder.  “Considering,”  he  wrote,  “that  the 
Brethren  of  your  Order  will  be  champions  of  the  Faith 
and  true  lights  of  the  zvorld,  We  do  hereby  confirm 
your  Order.”  How  truly  he  spoke,  the  history  of  the 
Dominicans  from  that  day  down  to  our  own  times 
is  a  shining  proof.  jj 

For  in  respect  to  their  labors  and  struggles  for  the 
Faith,  it  is  certain  that  there  were  never  any  who 
opposed  more  strongly  or  more  constantly  the  ad¬ 
versaries  of  Christian  truth.  First  of  all,  with  what 
great  strength  did  they  not  crush  the  audacity  of 
the  Albigenses,  for  whose  defeat,  indeed,  they  were 
divinely  raised  up !  Then,  how  strenuously  and 
learnedly  did  they  not  oppose,  by  their  teaching, 
preaching  and  writing,  the  Cathari,  the  Patarines, 
the  Hussites,  the  Reformers  and  all  the  heretics  that 
followed  !  Nor  rarely  were  there  found  among  them 
those  who  sealed  their  faith  by  the  outpouring  of 
their  blood.  As  an  example  We  need  but  mention 
the  illustrious  Peter  Martyr,  the  glory  of  Verona. 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS  225 

# 

With  what  zeal  they  cherished  and  guarded  the 
integrity  of  Faith  and  of  Christian  life  among  the 
people,  w'ho  does  not  know?  To  pass  over  other 
things  beneficially  introduced  by  them  to  this  end, 
such  as  the  Holy  Name  Society,  the  Confraternity 
of  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  the  Third  Order  of  St. 
Dominic,  undoubtedly  it  was  from  the  hands  of  St. 
Dominic  and  his  children  that  the  Church  received 
the  Rosary  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  “that  great  pro¬ 
tection  against  heresies  and  vices.”  Nor  did  they 
labor  less  zealously  and  usefully  in  propagating  the 
Faith.  For  we  know  that  from  the  very  beginning 
of  the  Order  their  missionaries  carried  the  Word  of 
God  writh  great  fruit  to  the  barbarians  of  Asia  and 
Northern  Africa ;  with  even  greater  success  did 
they  spread  the  truths  of  Christianity  in  Europe, 
especially  among  the  Poles  and  Hungarians.  And 
when  America  was  discovered,  the  Dominicans,  in 
particular  those  of  Spain,  felt  that  a  new  and  im¬ 
mense  field  had  been  opened  to  their  apostolic  zeal. 
In  such  manner  did  they  at  all  times  conduct  their 
apostolate  in  the  New  World,  that  the  result  was  a 
rich  harvest  of  souls  and  honorable  renown. 

Most  conspicuous  among  these  Dominican  mis¬ 
sionaries  to  America  were  Louis  Bertrand  and  Bar- 
tholomewr  de  las  Casas.  The  one  by  the  splendor  of 
his  virtues  and  the  greatness  of  his  miracles  renewed 
the  illustrious  example  of  the  Apostles.  The  other 
is  deservedly  ranked  as  one  of  the  great  vindicators 
of  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  because  not  only 
did  he  free  the  Indians  from  the  slavery  of  Satan, 
but  also  protected  them  from  the  domination  and 
persecution  of  w-icked  men. 


226 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


Finally,  that  which  above  all  else  proves  the  sin¬ 
cere  and  unsullied  Faith  of  the  Dominican  Order  is 
its  especial  and  uninterrupted  devotion  to  this 
Holy  See. 

For  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  when  the 
Papal  authority  was  contumaciously  attacked  by  the 
civil  power,  the  Dominicans  especially  suffered  much 
because  of  their  unfailing  loyalty  to  the  Popes ; 
whenever  there  was  need  to  uphold  the  rights  of  the 
Roman  Pontiff,  the  Dominicans  were  the  first  to 
undertake  their  defence.  Furthermore,  as  long  as 
the  memory  of  Catherine  of  Sienna  endures,  the 
singular  bond  that  unites  the  Dominican  family  to 
the  Apostolic  See  will  be  sufficiently  manifest. 

Ill 

There  can  be  no  question  whatever  but  that  the 
light  which  the  Dominicans  have  shed  upon  the 
world  to  Our  own  day  has  come  chiefly  from  their 
learning.  It  is  known  to  all  what  great  industry 
they  have  always  exercised  in  those  higher  studies 
which  promote  the  true  progress  of  the  race  in  right 
living;  nor  is  it  necessary  to  mention  those  among 
them  whose  genius  and  erudition  have  been  immor¬ 
talized  by  writings,  vast  and  profound. 

For  who  is  there  familiar  with  the  highest  studies 
who  does  not  stand  in  amazement  at  the  volumes 
of  Albert  the  Great,  of  Antoninus  and  of  Cajetan? 
Who  is  there  devoted  to  the  graver  sciences,  who 
will  not  most  highly  esteem,  most  earnestly  love, 
most  religiously  follow  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  light 
of  whose  doctrine  has  been  granted  the  Church  by 
divine  providence  for  the  confirmation  of  truth  and 


THE  ORDER  OF  PREACHERS 


227 


the  refutation  of  all  the  errors  of  time  to  come? 
Praise  is  due  this  Order  not  merely  because  it  pro¬ 
duced  the  Angelic  Doctor,  but  also  because  it  never 
afterwards  deviated  a  hair’s  breadth  from  his  teach¬ 
ing.  But  the  Dominican  Order  is  characterized  not 
only  by  the  light  of  learning,  but  also  by  that  diviner 
light  of  holiness. 

At  every  period  of  its  history,  great  multitudes 
of  this  religious  family  have  by  the  sanctity  of  their 
lives,  in  which,  indeed,  some  surpassed  others,  at¬ 
tained  to  the  blessedness  of  heaven,  and  from  there 
they  illuminate  for  the  faithful  the  pathway  to  every 
virtue.  This  choir  of  Saints  is  led  by  their  Father 
Dominic,  and  after  him,  shining  with  lesser  glory, 
follow  in  wonderful  variety  Aquinas,  Ferrer,  Ray¬ 
mond,  the  Virgin  of  Sienna,  and  she  who  was  the 
first  by  the  fame  of  her  sanctity  to  glorify  the  shores 
of  South  America.  j 

Considering  these  things  one  cannot  wonder  that 
the  Dominican  Order  has  always  been  held  in  high 
regard  by  the  Apostolic  See,  which,  indeed,  was 
itself  most  worthily  occupied  by  four  Dominican 
Popes.  Hence  the  Roman  Pontiffs  often  conferred 
upon  the  members  of  this  Order  the  highest  dignities 
and  entrusted  to  them  the  gravest  duties;  and  cer¬ 
tain  offices,  instituted  for  the  protection  of  the  Faith, 
were  committed  to  the  Order  as  a  commendation  of 
the  soundness  of  its  discipline  and  doctrine. 

Now  We,  Beloved  Son,  having  regard  of  all  these 
things,  first  of  all  do  render  supreme  thanks  to  God, 
the  Author  and  Giver  of  all  good,  for  that,  according 
to  His  kindness,  He  has  till  this  present  time  favored 


228 


SAINT  DOMINIC  AND 


the  Institute  of  your  Founder,  and  We  suppliantly 
pray  that  He  may  deign  in  a  similar  way  to  cherish 
and  assist  it  in  the  future.  Therefore  from  Our 
heart  We  congratulate  you  and  all  the  members  of 
your  threefold  Order,  and  We  exhort  you  that  you 
continue  to  show  yourselves  worthy  to  be  children 
of  so  great  a  Father  and  recipients  of  such  an  in¬ 
heritance.  We  think  it  augurs  well  for  you  yourself 
that  you  begin  the  government  of  the  Order  at  the 
approach  of  this  happy  commemoration,  and  We 
wish  you  a  term  of  office  marked  by  prosperity  and 
fruitful  to  the  Church.  In  order  that  this  centenary 
festivity,  which  falls  on  December  22d  of  this  year, 
may  be  celebrated  with  greater  spiritual  profit  and 
joy,  it  has  pleased  us  to  enrich  it  with  a  Pontifical 
indulgence.  Therefore,  We  grant,  for  one  time,  and 
under  the  usual  conditions,  a  plenary  indulgence  to 
all  those  who  visit  any  church  or  public  oratory  of 
the  first,  second  or  third  Order  of  St.  Dominic,  in 
which  the  seventh  centenary  is  being  commemorated 
by  a  triduum  or  by  the  observance  of  the  feast  day 
only.  Moreover  We  grant  not  only  for  the  day  of 
the  solemnity,  but  also  for  the  other  two  days  of 
the  triduum,  where  this  is  held,  that  the  Mass  of  St. 
Dominic  may  be  celebrated. 

Meanwhile  as  a  pledge  of  heavenly  gifts  and  as  a 
proof  of  our  fatherly  good-will  most  lovingly  do  We 
grant  to  you,  Beloved  Son,  and  to  your  entire  Order 
the  Apostolic  Benediction. 

Given  at  Rome  at  St.  Peter’s,  the  29th  day  of 
October,  1916,  in  the  third  year  of  Our  Pontificate. 

BENEDICT  XV,  Pope. 


does  not  cmcoiWE 


